The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-09-27
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

|, wonder if James Russell Lowell, who famous essay on Certain Condescension in Foreigners and took more than one pot shot at Englishmen and the laws and customs faintly suspected that one day he would be Americas s ambassador at the court of St. James.
 On my, first trip abroad in 1882 my brother and carried letters to him, but looking back on the way I acted, I am full of regret. for not needing any fla vors, I never presented the letters. and therefore missed the opportunity of meet ing not only one of our country's fore most men of letters, but one of the out standing men of his times.
 In spite of his strictures on the Brit ish he became one of the best beloved ever sent to London, and won the ad- miration of the more exacting English public, by his executive abilities and his social, literary and oratoric gifts, receiv- ing honors from the universities of OK ford, Cambridge and Edinburgh and in versity of St. Andrews. and there was general regret when his residence at St. James terminated in 1885.
 He won out, not by sycophant or trucking to the insular prejudices of the tight little isle,'' but by his generous and broad minded Americanism, which refused to toady or be patronzed; and yet withal, did it with such grace as to rebuke those in high life for their for mer attitude of condescension in speak ing of America and in their intercourse with citizens of the United States.
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 Don't get the idea that the literary men of England let Lowelfs essay go ur challenged or unanswered for it excit- ell to action Matthew Arnold, the re- doubtable critic, who forgot his own fa- nous phrase of sweetness and light" and went after his Yankee cousin in his own inimitable and aggravating way, and gave it the status of an international controversy.
 
 Now I admit that our hardy and val-i iant son of New England did not mince matters when he got down to his charges that the English made their narrow Anglicsm. the standard of all things. And that it was literary solar plexus when he landed with the following Tan. kee doodle putch: We are worth noth- ing" said he in speaking of his own ccuntryman, except so far as weyhave disinfected ourselves of Anglicism.
 This was not merely an attack on the Britisher who used an English yardstick as the only correct measure of civiliza- ton, but it was slap in the face of certain rather highly civilized individ- uals,'' who suffering from an acute at- the pleasant pastime of what some one called hopping back and forwards over the Atlantic to learn what was the last keynote which the arstocracy had sound- cd so that they could return to the CnIt- ed States and feebly initiate the sound. |
 I am not going back to the long line of travellers who did not end with Charles Dickens in their criticism of our manners, our laws, our literature, our art and our business. I merely recall them to show that Lowell was provoked to the defense of his country nearly So years ago. and that even to withins a few years we have had to suffer from the books written about us by English men of various stations of life, and that in spite of the fact that kiplins lived in the United States for awhile 1t did not keep him from saying some rather tart things about us.
 brought up the entire subject to make bold to say that this war is going to knit together England and America ina way