The Irish standard., 1906-08-25
Nothing Can Come Of the Spasm of Cordiality
So Long as Americans Continue to
be Americans.
If the American is an Anglo-Saxon the Eng
lishman is Pirate Norman or
Castaway Spaniard.

who do not want to see, or for the kind
Of American who takes Emerson as
gospel, and the other kind who stays
at home, or only leaves home on a
Cooks ticket, or is too stupid to see
beyond his own nose. There, however
the disguise is, to be stripped Off
there the veneer to be wiped, scraped,
or blown away-before we are face to
face with the characteristic disdain of
all Notwithstanding Americans
solid beneath it. Had Lowell lived to
rejoice in the Anglo Saxon alliance, the
entente cordiale-not Lowell the AM
bassador, but Lowell the American who
believed that until they fought it out
American and Englishmen never could
come to cordial terms-he would have
changed nothing in his chapter on the
attitude of the foreigner towards us;
he would merely have had to add few
words on the clumsy attempt of John
Bull to throw the dust of tattery in
our eyes. For the funny part of it is,
that the Englishman as an appreciative
ally cannot, with the best will in the
world, get .ever his patrcnizing airs.
Cordiality is only his new name for
the old condescension that Stevenson
said made him grill in his tlood when
he saw the Englishman unbend to the
American as to performing dog. John
Bull expects us to be as amazed as he
is himself when he condescends so
far as to be cordial-to be as pleased
when he proposes an alliance with us
as when he tells us, in surprise, that
that we were Americans, or when, by
the mouth Of hanger-on of royalty,
he declares, for example, that Really,
you know, British troops could not
have done better than American SOL
diers." The Englishman would stoop
to take whatever he could get from
us, and if the moment came when We
happened to want anything from him
which heaven forbid-he would think
he had already fully repaid us by his
patronage, by his admission of rela-
tionship, by his appearance in public
as it were, with us, his poor relation
on his arm.
l admit, from his point of view. it Is
q jol,f l,{r
had made the other nations for John
Bull to tread upon, from his astonish-
ment when they do not tumble over
each other in their hurry to get under
his feet, like the faithful before the Car
| Of Juggernaut.
This, then is what the entente COR
dale means. The Anglo-Saxon is an
alliance to keep on misunderstanding
one another and pretending we think 1t
| friendship-that is, if we in America
hold to the part of the bargain assigned
| to us. But the American cannot change
his independence, not the Briton shake
| off his prejudice. We are, we always
have been. we always shall be. differ
| ent; not with the difference that at
| tracts. but with the difference that re-
pel>. 1t may be attributed to this
cause or to that, to climate with NJ.
| Boutmy, to government, to food, to
wages, to it really does not matter
| what; the fact of difference remains,
however it may be accounted for. Our
| surprise ought to be not for the con-
slant contrasts between the English
and ourselves, but for the occasional
| resemblance. In pointing out the diff
ference, I know 1 am saying nothing
new. l merely recall a fact that the
English. blind believers in the blind
policy of "muddling through some-
how hope they can drown, while it
suits their convenience, in the blood
whose thickness they vaunt, or over
throw with one loud blast of their own
brazen trumpet. But because they now
ignore this difference, the American
who wants to know England can af-
ford to ignore it less even than in the
early days when the bluntness they call
honesty chilled his enthusiasm.
The American can come to England
with no fear that the country will fail
him in beauty or the charm of associa-
ton. The nightingales will sing for