New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-04-21
With All Her Faults
Reasons Why England Deserves
Friendship of Americans

To the Editor of The Tribune.
Sir; Native Americans who read of the IN
cident at the dinner of the Society OIL MUS
traitors should pray for more Cass HiloertS
to rebuke the Bourke Cockrans, whose secta-
rian prejudces and alien hostility to bhg'anu
were voiced but recently by others oil the
same race in doing honor to their patron
saint
We have had our differences with the Brit
ish government in times past, but we must
not forget that they were with the govern
ment and its policies and not with the Eng
lsh people. Even in our first conflict II must
be remembered that our ancestors were Eng
lishmen who fought for English principles
and our Declaration of independence was but
the third step in the progress OF Anglo
Saxon democracy. following in sequence the
Magma Charta and the Bill of Rights Later,
when our relations with the British govern
ment became strained during our Civil war;
James Russell Lowell, who did not spare the
English Cabinet and its following VINO TOOK
sides with the Southern States, took occa-
sion at the same time to remind us of our
kinship with the people across the sea and
of the danger of making ourselves "insensl-
BILE to the value of British opinion lie
touched the right chord when he wrote to
"The Atlantic Monthly" in this connection;
Because the door of the old homestead
has been once slammed in our faces, shall
we in a huff reject all future advances oil
Cancellation and cut ourselves foolIshly OIL
from any share in the humanizing influences
of the place, with its ineffable riches of as
ISOLATION, its heirlooms of immemorlal cult
ure, its historic monuments, ours no less
than theirs, its noble gallery of ancestral
portraits? We have only to succeed and
England will not only respect. but for the
first time begin to understand us. And let
US not in our justiisble indignation at
wanton insult forget that England is not
the England only of snobs who dread the de-
mocracy they do not comprehend, but the
England of history, of heroes, statesmen and
poets, whose names are dear, and their in
fuence as salutary to us as to her"
A generation later Oliver Wendell Holmes,
who described himself as an "inveterately
rooted" American, expressed sentiments
applicable to conditions to-day which might
we'll supplement Mr.. Cass Gilberts patriotic
rejoinder to Bourke Cockran
"Who is there" he wrote, "of English de-
scent among US that does not feel with Cow
per,
England, with all thy faults. love thee
still?
"Our recently naturslized fellow-citizens,
Of different blood and different religion.
must not supposc that we arc going to forget
our Unborn love for the mother TO whom we
owe our being. Protestant England and
Protestant America are coming nearer and
nearer to each other every year. The inter
change of the two peoples is more and more
frequent and there are many reasons why it
is likely TO continue increasing"
And he adds, we feel more and more the
truth of the generous sentiment which closes
the ode of Washington Allston." america to
Great Britain: ave are one!" II. W. S.
Philadelphia, April 10, 1917.