A Straight Deal; Or, The Ancient Grudge. Owen WisterЧитать онлайн книгу.
many American soldiers in Europe, I wonder, have looked about them, have used their sensible independent American brains (our very best characteristic), have left school histories and hearsay behind them and judged the English for themselves? A good many, it is to be hoped. What that judgment finally becomes must depend not alone upon the personal experience of each man. It must also come from that liberality of outlook which is attained only by getting outside your own place and seeing a lot of customs and people that differ from your own. A mind thus seasoned and balanced no longer leaps to an opinion about a whole nation from the sporadic conduct of individual members of it. It is to be feared that some of our soldiers may never forget or make allowance for a certain insult they received in the streets of London. But of this later. The following sentence is from a letter written by an American sailor:
“I have read … ‘The Ancient Grudge’ and I wish it could be read by every man on our big ship as I know it would change a lot of their attitude toward England. I have argued with lots of them and have shown some of them where they are wrong but the Catholics and descendants of Ireland have a different argument and as my education isn’t very great, I know very little about what England did to the Catholics in Ireland.”
Ireland I shall discuss later. Ireland is no more our business to-day than the South was England’s business in 1861. That the Irish question should defeat an understanding between ourselves and England would be, to quote what a gentleman who is at once a loyal Catholic and a loyal member of the British Government said to me, “wrecking the ship for a ha’pennyworth of tar.”
The following is selected from the nays, and was written by a business man. I must not omit to say that the writers of all these letters are strangers to me.
“As one American citizen to another … permit me to give my personal view on your subject of ‘The Ancient Grudge’ …
“To begin with, I think that you start with a false idea of our kinship—with the idea that America, because she speaks the language of England, because our laws and customs are to a great extent of the same origin, because much that is good among us came from there also, is essentially of English character, bound up in some way with the success or failure of England.
“Nothing, in my opinion, could be further from the truth. We are a distinctive race—no more English, nationally, than the present King George is German—as closely related and as alike as a celluloid comb and a stick of dynamite.
“We are bound up in the success of America only. The English are bound up in the success of England only. We are as friendly as rival corporations. We can unite in a common cause, as we have, but, once that is over, we will go our own way—which way, owing to the increase of our shipping and foreign trade, is likely to become more and more antagonistic to England’s.
“England has been a commercially unscrupulous nation for generations and it is idle to throw the blame for this or that act of a nation on an individual. Such arguments might be kept up indefinitely as regards an act of any country. A responsible nation must bear the praise or odium that attaches to any national action. If England has experienced a change of heart it has occurred since the days of the Boer Republic—as wanton a steal as Belgium, with even less excuse, and attended with sufficient brutality for all practical purposes. …
“She has done us many an ill turn gratuitously and not a single good turn that was not dictated by selfish policy or jealousy of others. She has shown herself, up till yesterday at least, grasping and unscrupulous. She is no worse than the others probably—possibly even better—but it would be doing our country an ill turn to persuade its citizens that England was anything less than an active, dangerous, competitor, especially in the infancy of our foreign trade. When a business rival gives you the glad hand and asks fondly after the children, beware lest the ensuing emotions cost you money.
“No: our distrust for England has not its life and being in pernicious textbooks. To really believe that would be an insult to our intelligence—even grudges cannot live without real food. Should England become helpless tomorrow, our animosity and distrust would die to-morrow, because we would know that she had it no longer in her power to injure us. Therein lies the feeling—the textbooks merely echo it. …
“In my opinion, a navy somewhat larger than England’s would practically eliminate from America that ‘Ancient Grudge’ you deplore. It is England’s navy—her boasted and actual control of the seas—which threatens and irritates every nation on the face of the globe that has maritime aspirations. She may use it with discretion, as she has for years. It may even be at times a source of protection to others, as it has—but so long as it exists as a supreme power it is a constant source of danger and food for grudges.
“We will never be a free nation until our navy surpasses England’s. The world will never be a free world until the seas and trade routes are free to all, at all times, and without any menace, however benevolent.
“In conclusion … allow me to again state that I write as one American citizen to another with not the slightest desire to say anything that may be personally obnoxious. My own ancestors were from England. My personal relations with the Englishmen I have met have been very pleasant. I can readily believe that there are no better people living, but I feel so strongly on the subject, nationally—so bitterly opposed to a continuance of England’s sea control—so fearful that our people may be lulled into a feeling of false security, that I cannot help trying to combat, with every small means in my power, anything that seems to propagate a dangerous friendship.”
I received no dissenting letter superior to this. To the writer of it I replied that I agreed with much that he said, but that even so it did not in my opinion outweigh the reasons I had given (and shall now give more abundantly) in favor of dropping our hostile feeling toward England.
My correspondent says that we differ as a race from the English as much as a celluloid comb from a stick of dynamite. Did our soldiers find the difference as great as that? I doubt if our difference from anybody is quite as great as that. Again, my correspondent says that we are bound up in our own success only, and England is bound up in hers only. I agree. But suppose the two successes succeed better through friendship than through enmity? We are as friendly, my correspondent says, as two rival corporations. Again I agree. Has it not been proved this long while that competing corporations prosper through friendship? Did not the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern form a combination called the Northern Securities, for the sake of mutual benefit? Under the Sherman Act the Northern Securities was dissolved; but no Sherman act forbids a Liberty Securities. Liberty, defined and assured by Law, is England’s gift to the modern world. Liberty, defined and assured by Law, is the central purpose of our Constitution. Just as identically as the Northern Pacific and Great Northern run from St. Paul to Seattle do England and the United States aim at Liberty, defined and assured by Law. As friends, the two nations can swing the world towards world stability. My correspondent would hardly have instanced the Boers in his reference to England’s misdeeds, had he reflected upon the part the Boers have played in England’s struggle with Germany.
I will point out no more of the latent weaknesses that underlie various passages in this letter, but proceed to the remaining letters that I have selected. I gave one from an enlisted man and one from a sailor; this is from a commissioned officer, in France.
“I cannot refrain from sending you a line of appreciation and thanks for giving the people at home a few facts that I am sure some do not know and throwing a light upon a much discussed topic, which I am sure will help to remove from some of their minds a foolish bigoted antipathy.”
Upon the single point of our school histories of the Revolution, some of which I had named as being guilty of distorting the facts, a correspondent writes from Nebraska:
“Some months ago … the question came to me, what about our Montgomery’s History now. … I find that everywhere it is the King who is represented as taking these measures against the American people. On page 134 is the heading, American Commerce; the new King George III; how he interfered with trade; page 135, The King proposes to tax the Colonies; page 136, ‘The best men in Parliament—such men as William Pitt and Edmund Burke—took the side