The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-06-27
THE Nzw AMERICAN DANGER,


 Miilionaires and Appreciative Brit
 ishers-The Same Race, Same Bluo'
 Argument.
 To the Editor of the Journal and Courier!
 London, June 19.-With the Fourth ot
 of July so near one can think of nt
 subject more fascinating than the
 changed sentiments toward America
 and her. people of those from whom, al
 the swords point, the colonies Wor
 their independence And this is fortu-
 nate, because just at tie time this let
 ter is written there has been such q
 succession of remarkable occurrences
 beginning with the investment by An
 drew Carnegie of ten millions of Amer
 ican money in Scot tish education and
 ending in the double triumph of our
 countrymen at Epson DoWns, with
 the reception given to representatives
 of the New York Chamber of Con-
 merce coming in between, that 1t would be difficult for an American visitor to
 London to ignore this subject. Really
 there has been in these weeks a new
 apotheosis in England, and the gods
 before whom the English people are
 lowing down, who are they, do you think but our own modest selves? If therafter American visitors do the least thing to merit the thread-worn English fling at Yankee loudness and boastful- ness, who will be to blame? To stand so much adulation one must be more than human. My own humility never had such a shock. To crown their oth- CT tributes and favors he people of this real ought now, in final proof of their regard to put a new petition in their prayer book, asking that we who are here, and are compelled to see ous- selves from the English view point, may not be unduly puffed up.
 "The American Danger" a phrase with which the papers over here have made us very familiar, has now an al- tered significance for some of us. Orig inally it meant the peril to which Eng fish trade is exposed by American com- petition, and this American peril we have been repeatedly assured, is more to be dreaded than "the Yellow Dan- ger from the past" Does this mean, wonder, that we are worse than the plague, or does it merely mean that we are harder to control than the plague? Not that it matters in the least, for to Americans who are in England just now to see for themselves what is go- ing on, ''The American Danger" means nothing more nor less than the danger to which Americans are exposed, owing to the recent flop in their favor of England and all things English, Of thinking a Together too much of them selves. Even the weather seems to have come our way. It is typically American, and even more so; IS one might expect, for whatever is an imi- tation is sure to be somewhat eXagger- ated. And, would you believe it, there have been nothing but bright skies and genial warmth in London since that gift by which three weeks ago Andrew Carnegie so completely "Americanized' the Scotch universities
 Thus at last is there a chance for the average Englishman to emancipate himself from one of the things which | must surely have been a serious hand leap in the race for the worlds mar kets. refer primarily to his umbrel- | la, but incidentally, also, to that alter | native fad of his, the Walking-stick. l The proverbial English dictum on this | subject, based on the emotional ten lencies of the English barometer, has | always been, "Be sure to take an um- orelIa when it doesn't rain-please when it does" Hence the and his umbrella, or the to 1t, have become insepa- able companions, with the result, of ,ourse, that he has been to that extent in his struggle for commercial In other words habit has breed him--a very trivial habit I ,rant-to think so much of himself and is belongings that he has not been ble to think so much as his rivals ave of what he must do next, in a usiness way if he would keep up with he procession. A trivial matter to I've admitted-yet even o light thing as a feather may show mich way the wind is blowing, and no sss does this one little tendency let us ito the secret of England's relative at this time in realms of nterprise which formerly were all her wn It is all the result of habit. She too set in her ways, too much at ached to old cust oms, too considerate forms, too careful of her dignity too fraid of getting little wet, too de- 1, ,rmined to carry on business in just < le way in which she has always done fin other words, too much attached c her umbrella and walking stick. TO this charge the English people s are pleading guilty, and no g merican pen could ever set forth ore strongly than they the inferiori- t of their own methods to ours or the gent need there is for the old mother
 wake up and at the opening of the U wv century take a leaf out of the won U rful book opened in the last century |, her enterprsing daughter If used u be that if the American people want
 anything very good said of them 5 CT here they had to say it them- II Ives, and everybody knows that to e emergency thus created by an un- s' preciative British public, American II sitors, as rule were more than II ual. But what change! Now all F. e has to do is just sit still, keep one's ot outh shut and listen to nothing but ~. 9 big brass band of British adulation -, nm rosy morn till dewy eve. From all 2 president of the Board of Trade, T, aaking before Parliament and justi- ,-. ng the government in buying Amer l., n locomotives on the ground that ,y are better and cheaper than those Al, lde in England, all the way down to A 1se newspaper writers who, apropos +t A. t,,;,