The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-05-08
ENGLISH WRITER
SAYS AMERICANS
WILL LEAD WORLD

Asserts War Gives England
a Chance to Atone for
Her Past Blunders
hitherto all the active political rela-
tons between Great. Britain and AM
erica have been hostile relations,
writes William Archer, in the West
minister Gazette Twice the two ma
tions have been at war, and there are
not a few Americans who are fond Of
boasting that in both of these con-
flicts they whipped" US
Our normal level relations have no
doubt been 'anicable enough; but
whenever the level has been broken
it has been by incidents which left
a certain legacy of in-feeling.
The general attitude of Britain dur
ing the great Civil war was anything
but sympathetic Once we were on
the verge of a rupture over the case
of Mason and SndelL The affair of
the Alabama was exceedingly dis
agreeable; the Venezuelan squabble
led us, not perhaps to the brink of
rection-
The incident of Manila Bay is per-
haps the only international episode of
any note that has definitely tended
to draw the two nations together.
OF course this does not mean that
there has not been zeal friendship
between them There has never been
moment when thousands of Eng
lishmen and thousands of Americans
have not felN the warmest regard for
each other. Perhaps it may even be
said that the reciprocal feeling or the
majority of both peoples has been a.
sort of vaguely critical and suspicious
kindness.
But there have always been certain
classes in America that cherished old
rancors against England, and these
were not a little encouraged by the
cation
No one can read the American
newspapers Of today without realiz-
| ing that except among cultured
minority in the Eastern states, pro-
ally sympathies are conferred rather
upon France and Belgium than upon
England, and that in the Middle West
and West the feeling of the masses
toward the Allies in general. and
England in particular, is at best one
of indifference.
| Whatever may happen, this is not
going to change all at once We are not
going to fan on each Others neck and
swear eternal friendship
Nevertheless, great new fact has
come into existence In the most mo-
mentous crisis in the history sof the
world the whole. English speaking
4 - che fc
shoulder.
Nothing but criminal unwisdom
or mali grant Ill fortune can cancel
or turn to evil the heneficent results
| that ought to flow from this wonder
full and almost political genius.
Never again can it be said that "all
active political relations between
Britain and America has been hostile
relations" That remark is expunged
i from the page of history. -
I And now it is UP to us-why should
1--we not talk American ?-to make the
best of this new situation. Hitherto
4 take us all round-we have been cu1-
pable and stupidity inappreciative OF
America
The time has been, no doubt, when
). there was a great deal of rawness In
i American life, which lent itself to car
feature, and when, on the other hand
many Americans displayed at. once
great self -assertiyeness and morbid
4 resentfulness of our criticism.
II But the Civil war may fairly be
said to have made an end to all that
I-or at least the beginning of an end
/ Since then half a century has passed
and now we have not the smal1es
rational excuse for carelessness OF
captiousness in our judgments of Am
erica.
4 To anyone with a spark of imag
lination the United States is the mos
T fascinating country in the world. 1T
8 past is romantic, its present marvel
!, GUS. its future inconceivab1e.
? Let me give one instance of the 70
3 nance of the past that clings to S,
T many places in America
: is I will not speak Of Lexington o
> Concord l.. will not speak of Mt. Yer
! mon or Charleston; will not speak o
4 the place in all America which mos
I people in England, perhaps, think o
: as the very antithesis of romance
8 mean Pittsburgh.
1t is called Hell with the lid off,
n and don't say it does not merit tina
: term of endearment; but to stand o.
7 the big bluff over against the city an,
9 look down upon the confluence of tn
7 Allegheny and the Monongahela (mos
V beautiful of words!) is to experienc
y a strange and complex emotion.
! For the two rivers, each as grea
as the Raine or the Rhone, unite t
. form the magnificent Ohio. And tn
Ohio rolls on into the still nightie
9 Mississippi; and down these giganti
:. waterways the first French adventu1
= ers padded thousands of. league
u through the boundless, sinister wild
e erness; and Martin Chuzzlewit an
- Mark Tap1ey sought the city of Elder
L. and Huckleberry Finn and Jim we1
L drifting through and Odyssey wl1ic
I, for one, believe to be as surely in
L mortal as any story in this world.
A few miles I'D the Monosahel
% is the spot where Cen Braddocl
N with George Washington and Georf
u Warrington in his train, fell into tt
~ fatal ambush.
l. And there, at the very tip of I'll
tongue of land between the two ri
IS ers, nesting in the shadow of Il
&c skyscrapers like a beehive under S
sy Peters, is the little octagonal bloc
10 house, pierced for musketry, whft
20 was once Fort Duquesne, and aft
m that Fort Pitt, and from which tt
=. city takes its name.
al OF the titanic. 1urid picturesquene
~ of the scene 1 shall not attempt