Part 1

ANGLO-SAXON SOLIDARITY

ANGLO-SAXON SOLIDARITY

BY Herbert Adams Gibbons

THE CENTURY CO. MDCCCCXXI

COPYRIGHT 1920 BY

THE CENTURY CO

REPRINTED FROM

THE CHRISTMAS _Century_ 1920

ANGLO-SAXON SOLIDARITY

By Herbert Adams Gibbons

None denies that the world is askew. Ships of state are pilotless and rudderless, riding God knows where. In every country internal economic and social conditions are so upset that forecasts of the morrow seem futile. And yet international political relationships depend upon these internal conditions more intimately and more wholly than ever before in history. Statesmen may still be sitting at the diplomatic chessboard, making moves in accordance with the old rules of the game. But each realizes that shaping the foreign policy of his nation is no longer independent of or divorced from home policies and problems. Things have changed. The old order upon which one could count in directing foreign affairs has given place to new and uncertain values. Just what the changes are, whether for good or bad, whether permanent or temporary, and how we are to adjust ourselves to them and take advantage of them or combat them, as the case may be, on all this we read little that is constructive. Prophets are alarmists, and critics keep telling us what we know, that our statesmen are making a mess of things internationally and that we are badly off internally because legislators and executives are passive in the face of high prices and social unrest.

Dear me! do we need to be taught that our house is not in order by having it, figuratively at least, pulled down around our ears? Politicians and professors and publicists must call a halt on their flood of complaint and denunciation and warning. The rôle of Cassandra may have been necessary to get people to pay attention, but when the public begins to say, "Well, what of it?" tirades must be changed to programs, if the piercing through the armor-plate of indifference is to accomplish any good result. "You writers on political and economic affairs give me the willies," said a bluff business man to me the other day. "If I do not stop reading you, I'll get to thinking in circles."

Many who see the danger-signal try to heed it by shifting from fault-finding to rose-hued platitudes. We have seen this in the recent political campaign. When managers and orators felt that public opinion was growing restive under constant criticism and impatient of overdoses of "the world is going to the bow-wows," the strident notes gave way to a grand diapason of "All's well!" Everything had been and would again be lovely in these United States, once the disturbing element of the opposing political party was snowed under by the avalanche of voters saving the republic.

In a political campaign demagogic methods may be excusable. After all, the public has the votes, and must be handled with due regard for the laws of mob psychology. But when we see the same methods applied to the presentation of a question of permanent interest and importance, and applied by men who both know better and have not the defense of electoral anxiety and expediency, it is time to protest. As an Anglo-Saxon American, whose deepest interest is in the solidarity of the English-speaking world, I want to raise my voice against the tactless and platitudinous type of article and speech one reads and hears everywhere in connection with the Pilgrim tercentenary. In my childhood, when the kitchen happened to run out of cereals or milk, the cook used to give us a dish of bread or flour and water with a liberal sprinkling of sugar to disguise its origin. To make children take "pap," everything depends upon the sugar. The ingredients and their cooking do not enter in.

I would not do all tercentenary orators the injustice of imputing to them paucity of ideas. For the cleverest of writers and preachers are among the most platitudinous when they touch the subject of our relations with Great Britain. Why do they go no further than extolling Puritan stock and our inheritance from the mother country and declaring that no sinister influences disturb the complete understanding that exists between those to whom blood is thicker than water? Article after article, speech after speech, toast after toast, have I read or sat through, and failed to get any idea other than that it was reprehensible and "pro-German" to criticize Great Britain, that the Irish were akin to the Bolshevists, and that the bonds uniting the two great nations of the Anglo-Saxon world were imperishable. Our British hosts are assured that history text-books have been responsible for much of our misunderstanding of the British, and that when we have remedied the way the War of Independence and the War of 1812 and the British attitude in the Civil War were presented to American children, a desire to twist the lion's tail will remain in this country only among Germans and Irish. And we shall substitute "Over There" as our national anthem for "The Star-Spangled Banner," whose origin is, like the Fourth of July, extremely embarrassing for Anglo-American relations. And no matter what war may arise, together shall we stand, as we did in France. So on _ad nauseam_.

We must not be uncharitable in passing judgment on tercentenary orators. With British hosts in the audience and at the table, and considering the occasion, a graceful eulogy is the order of the day. Still, it is possible to combine constructive thinking with complimentary references to past and present, especially when we consider that tercentenary celebrations draw thoughtful, earnest people, who do not have to be treated like a movie audience or a campaign gathering. But so strongly are we under the influence of the propaganda of the recent war that our tongues cleave to the roof of the mouth when any thought comes into our head that, if uttered, might be interpreted as criticizing a British foreign or domestic policy or suggesting that Anglo-American relations need careful guiding and nursing. Still under the spell of the war, our tercentenary utterances are "pap," uninteresting, tiresome, and not contributing, as they ought to do, something new to the great problem of Anglo-Saxon solidarity.

We might dismiss the tercentenary disappointment with a simple expression of regret over the great opportunity missed, were it not for the strong feeling that the loving-cup and patting-ourselves-mutually-on-the-back performances are positively harmful to Anglo-Saxon solidarity. They have the effect of a soporific to American believers in Anglo-Saxon solidarity and of a stimulant to the enemies among Americans of friendship with Great Britain. The man who attends Pilgrim dinners and celebrations goes home with the comfortable feeling that Anglo-Saxon solidarity is stronger than ever. It is a physical reaction from the food and lights and flowers and music and women, not a mental reaction from the speakers. Satisfied and reassured, the tercentenary celebrant thinks he has done all that is necessary to maintain and strengthen the bonds of friendship and good understanding between the English-speaking nations. The sugar is to his taste. The German-American who reads the reports of the speeches and toasts in the newspapers finds his instinctive antipathy to Anglo-Saxon solidarity confirmed by the tercentenary orator's foolish and distorted conception of it. There is no sugar on the "pap" for him. As for the Irishman, he sees redder than ever when he reads of tercentenary orators lauding Puritans for exiling themselves and later fighting England for freedom's sake and denouncing the Irish for aspiring to freedom.

Yes, I know the American of Scotch or English descent is likely to say that this is an Anglo-Saxon country, and that the Germans and Irishmen and other Europeans did not have to come here. When they did come, it was up to them to forget old ties and become assimilated with us. We have the right to justify close ties with Great Britain on the ground of "blood is thicker than water," but they have not that right in regard to their countries of origin. In 1914 this contention was put squarely before Americans of European origin. We forget now that it was never admitted by them, and that the remarkable union of the American nation, after we went into the war, did not mean, among Americans of other than Anglo-Saxon origin, the abandonment of affection for, of pride in, their own ancestors. They refuse to accept the brand of hyphenate, arguing that, until the country of origin became the enemy of the United States, they had as much right to feel sympathetic toward it and even help its cause as did the Americans of Anglo-Saxon origin to sympathize with and help Great Britain. Now that the war is over, these non-Anglo-Saxons say to us, "If in your tercentenary celebrations you insist on blood relationship, do not speak for the United States. We resent that and deny your right. Speak only for your own element in the American population."

We Anglo-Saxons cannot expect to denounce Ireland and even Germany and affirm our affection for and championship of England _on the ground of blood relationship_, as is being done in almost every tercentenary celebration, and expect our right to speak for the United States not to be contested. Unfortunately, this is not "our country." The United States, from the beginning, contained elements without a drop of Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins, and Germans, Irishmen, and Hollanders fought in the Revolutionary War. Throughout the nineteenth century the United States relied for her growth and expansion upon European immigration, and the large part of the Irish and German elements came to this country before the Civil War. The United States is not our (Anglo-Saxon) country either because of the great preponderance of people of our unmixed blood or because the Anglo-Saxon element founded it exclusively and made it what it is. The greatness of the United States in the third decade of the twentieth century is due to the combined aid of several different elements of her population, and it is certain that we could not have dispensed with either the German or the Irish element. And these elements are so numerous and so powerful in wealth and political influence that it is inexpedient--to use a mild word--to ignore or affront them in our tercentenary writing and speaking. It does not help the cause of Anglo-Saxon solidarity for a tercentenary orator to denounce the German-Americans and the Irish-Americans. Quite the contrary. Thoughtless speakers who indulge in such diatribes and enthusiastic listeners who beam approval are digging the grave and assisting at the interment of Anglo-Saxon solidarity.

On a Sunday morning in January, 1915, I went to service at an Anglican church in Cairo. After the prayers for the king and the royal family, the minister prayed for the President of the United States. I knew, of course, that this beautiful and graceful custom holds in many Anglican chapels on the Continent which American tourists attend, and I suppose it was introduced in Cairo for the same reason. But in wartime, when we were neutral and when there were no tourists in Cairo, the prayer touched me deeply. It was an evidence of the close relationship between my country and Great Britain, closer than between Great Britain and her allies. I sat through a dull sermon, thinking of what a privilege it was for an American to share in the advantages of the unique position of the British Empire. Travel where I would in the world, I could use my own language and attend my own church and hear my country remembered in prayer. Common language and common faith, common laws and customs and common ideals--does the untraveled American appreciate the wealth of his Anglo-Saxon heritage and the vast privileges it confers upon him?

But on another American correspondent who was not of Anglo-Saxon origin this incident made no impression, and he did not follow me in prizing the heritage. "Language is a lucky convenience," he admitted, "but the English are foreigners to me. I feel nothing in common with them, nothing at all." He went on to say that he regarded the British as a more dangerous enemy than the Germans, and that our next war would be with them. My friend was a high-minded and intelligent American who had been to school in England and also in France. In temperament he was more emotional than I; he loved music and architecture and handled carpets reverently. But his American blood--three or four generations--gave him no feeling of kinship with the English. I realized, when it came to the test of liking for a European country, that his sympathies were instinctively with Germany, while mine were as instinctively with England. Why? The difference in our blood and background of tradition. Later this correspondent rendered splendid service in the A. E.F. But he was fighting for the United States alone, and more than once told me that he would do everything in his power, after the war, to keep the United States from "falling in the orbit," as he put it, of the British Empire.

It will do us no good to discount the importance of our compatriots who are not of Anglo-Saxon blood. If we want to make Anglo-Saxon solidarity a national policy instead of a group cult, we shall have to find an appeal to the American public different from that of the orators and writers who speak in these days of our ancestors, our common blood, our precious Anglo-Saxon heritage. Nor is the superiority of Anglo-Saxon culture an argument that impresses many outside of our group. It smacks too much of a discredited political system that sought to replace or dominate other cultures by the _Kulture_ of the _Uebermensch_. Some of the tercentenary orators come dangerously near plagiarizing the ex-Kaiser.

Culture is a vague word. If it means traditions and customs and mental habits as embodied in our literature and preserved in our family life, we shall find many other American elements than the German unwilling to abandon for our culture what they brought here from the Old World. Thousands of flourishing communities exist in the United States, nurseries of splendid Americans, where the new generation is being brought up with traditions and customs and mental habits very different from those of Anglo-Saxons. From Scandinavians to Italians, elements of continental European origin are not giving up their culture for Anglo-Saxon culture. So strong are atavism, the home circle, and the church that our public-school system does not Anglo-Saxonize the children. I used to believe in this assimilation and to write that it was being accomplished. Experience, especially with officers and soldiers of the A.E.F., has taught me that I was wrong.

If millions upon millions of Americans are ignorant of or indignantly reject the bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity lovingly dwelt upon by tercentenary orators and writers, what are we going to do about it? We cannot tell Hans Schmidt, Giuseppe Tommasi, Abram Einstein, Olaf Andersen, Robert Emmet O'Brien, and a dozen others that they are not good Americans because they do not cheerfully accept the supremacy of the Scotch and English among us and the superiority of Scotch and English ways. Nothing could be better fitted to arouse within them a fierce determination to resist assimilation and oppose the policy of Anglo-Saxon solidarity.

Here is our problem. We of pure Anglo-Saxon stock, whose ancestors came to America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have never been accused of hating ourselves and being oblivious to our origin. We have overloaded the _Mayflower_ and over-populated Virginia and given William Penn a host of intimate friends. From the time of Washington Irving we have become more and more reconciled with our British cousins, and have learned to build our traditions from long before the Revolutionary War. We have become aware of our precious Anglo-Saxon heritage. At the outbreak of the World War we celebrated a hundred years of peace with Great Britain. Then we entered the war, and fought with the British against a common enemy.

Now, after the victory, we come to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. We are more than ever glad of our blood and traditions. We are immensely proud of the British stock from which we sprang. How the deeds of the British on land and sea quickened our pulses as we read of them! A privileged few of us saw and shared in them. More important still, during the war, there were times when we realized that Anglo-Saxondom was threatened with an eclipse of glory and influence. A thing is never so precious as when you are faced with losing it. Will any reader of this article ever forget the awful sensation that came when he read the first bulletins of the Battle of Jutland? No Anglo-Saxon could be indifferent about the outcome of the war after that experience. The aftermath of the war has not dispelled, but rather confirmed, the instinct of danger felt during the war. We say to ourselves that the British Empire and the United States must face the future together. How are we going to create an irresistible public opinion in the United States in favor of a foreign policy that will embody as one of its cardinal principles the fostering of Anglo-Saxon solidarity? What are the bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity?

I think I have proved that the elements of our population which are not Anglo-Saxon do not take much stock in Anglo-American community of blood and culture and history because they are not bases to them. Their blood is not ours, their culture is different, and American history gives them ground for antagonism to the British rather than sympathy with the British. The earlier English history they did not share. Other grounds must be sought to convince the American nation that it is a part of Anglo-Saxondom and should work for the union and prosperity of Anglo-Saxondom. The only cultural basis that has a wider appeal than simply to one of several American groups is the question of common language.

English is our national language. But this forms a strong bond only with Canada, where there is a constant intercourse among peoples and a constant exchange of books and periodicals. It is becoming a factor in our relations with Australia, also, because Australians read widely and with avidity popular American literature. But outside of a limited circle, which needs no conversion to Anglo-Saxon solidarity, few British and Americans come into personal contact, and the reciprocal purchase of books and magazines and newspapers is surprisingly small. Potentially, however, common language is a basis of solidarity. It is an asset in favor of those who are working to bring the English-speaking peoples together.

The practicable bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity, which tercentenary orators could present with effect to _all_ their compatriots, are common laws and spirit of administration of justice, similar development of democratic institutions, common ideals, and common interests. The first two are in a certain sense included in the third and fourth, and the fourth covers the first three. One appeals to the moral sense and to self-interest, and then, to clinch the argument, shows how idealism is in harmony with interest, as in the adage, "Honesty is the best policy."

In discussing the four bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity, it must be remembered that the problem involves the direct relations between each two of the members of the English-speaking group of nations and between each English-speaking country and the colonies and possessions of the British Empire and the United States. The following table shows how wide a field Anglo-Saxon solidarity covers:

Great Britain and United States Great Britain and Ireland Ireland and United States Great Britain and Canada United States and Canada Ireland and Canada Great Britain and Australia United States and Australia Ireland and Australia Canada and Australia Great Britain and New Zealand United States and New Zealand Ireland and New Zealand Canada and New Zealand Australia and New Zealand Great Britain and South Africa United States and South Africa Ireland and South Africa Canada and South Africa Australia and South Africa New Zealand and South Africa Great Britain and India and other possessions United States and British possessions Ireland and British possessions Canada and British possessions Australia and British possessions New Zealand and British possessions South Africa and British possessions United States and her possessions Great Britain and American possessions Ireland and American possessions Canada and American possessions Australia and American possessions New Zealand and American possessions South Africa and American possessions British possessions and American possessions

Thirty-six separate headings may seem on first glance useless repetition. But I ask my readers simply to take each heading, think for a minute, and there will arise in your mind some problem of Anglo-Saxon solidarity involving primarily the two parties coupled in each of the thirty-six headings. In fact, it is not difficult to find several sources of friction calling for adjustment under a single head. I have not space to enumerate. Nor have I increased the list by adding the new headings that might be justified by the new responsibilities of the British Empire through the acquisition--in complicated form because of division with self-governing dominions and the as yet unsettled limitations of mandates--of the former German colonies.

The years immediately ahead are years of great peril for Anglo-Saxon solidarity. The problems we must face and solve go so far beyond the matters dealt with by tercentenary orators that one feels the crying need of light and more light in considering the quadrangular character of relations between the different parts of Anglo-Saxondom--Great Britain, self-governing dominions, the United States, and the possessions and protectorates British and American. Japan? The Pacific? Tariffs and shipping? Sea-power? Status of the Near East and the German colonies? Panama Canal? Monroe Doctrine? League of Nations? Ireland? We cannot treat these matters only as questions between London and Washington affecting Anglo-American relations. Nor can Great Britain treat them that way. Both London and Washington are forced to take into consideration the self-governing dominions of the British Empire whose sentiments and interests give them a distinct point of view and program of their own. With the exception of South Africa, the self-governing dominions are, like the United States, the outgrowth of transplanted Anglo-Saxon civilization. It is natural that in mentality, and frequently in interests, they should be nearer us than the mother country. Canada and South Africa have important Caucasian elements that have not been under the influence of, and are antipathetic to, Anglo-Saxon culture. Australia's Irish rival ours in singing the hymn of hate against England.