Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-05-13
ANoLo-AMERlcAN FRIENDSHIP
How Years Of Foolish Prejudice and
Ignorance on Both Sides Have
Hambered Relations
BY WILLIAM McFEE
Engineer Lieutenant, British Navy

BtttiM horeHSf, to his American pubhSherS
in phich he discusses the ignorance o.
America tohich preraiis in England.
7 DON'T say saw all this (the imperfec'
L tions Of the British educational system)
as clearly then as ! do now. | am looking
back j do know, however, that it didn't
satisfy me personally. The eternal Snug
ness and self satisfaction got on my nerves.
l cut loose and went to sea.
1t is a sad and disconcerting fact that the
most ignorant and bigoted anti Americans
are to be found on British merchant ships.
In part this is due to the very narrowing
educational system which I have mentioned
and in part to the fact that the water
fronts of United States ports, like water
ports elsewhere, do not contain the elite of
the nation. The British shipmaster found
that disaster awaited him if he relaxed for
a single moment his business vigilance while
in an American port. The age-old theory
that n seafaring man is half witted. be-
cause if he were in his senses he would not
go to sea. was strongly held in American
shipping circles.
Swat the skipper" was popular slogan.
Hes only lime -juicer-soak him on his
manifcsts.'
This reacted unfavorably upon the general
OplulOnS OIL American eInlCS nelO III our
merchant service. The skipper who had
suffered financially from American sharps
rctailed his experience at the cabin table.
in his owners Office, in his own parlor, and
it all helped to confuse our ideas and
strengthen the lifelong prejudice against
America
T CAME up against this with tremendous
IL in hoJ in,
America, living among Americans and sail
ing out of American ports in American
ships. and the chief impression I had gath
cred from old residents who had never been
out of their native state, from wealthy pas
sengers | had met in the West Indies and
from American shipmates was their un
quenchable interest in England and the
English. I could not tell them enough about
my country. I was reprimanded for the
national vice of reticence and standofish-
ness. They wanted to know. They wanted
to admire 1t warmed my heart to hear
them. And it warns my heart now to re-
member it,
But when. in the great emotional up
hcaval Of 1914, / made my way home to
England and began to sail under the red
ensign once more, l was astounded at the
solid mass of blind prejudice and ignorance
which formed the average Englishman's
mental equipment about America. The
tragedy lay in the fact that they didn't
want to know anything about America.
"What have they done, anyhow, except
bragg" demanded the chief engineer of
transport. They have never originated
anything that I ever heard Of
I instanced the telephone, the snap shut
ter camera, the airplane, the submarine
and the gramophone. 1t was no use
Strange as it seems when written down,
that chief engineer could not see any flaw
in his argument.
II mean politically he retorted wood
enly; we've built up great empire What
have the Americans done in the last hun
dred years except whip Spain?'
mentioned the Louisiana Purchase rs an
instance of what might be called some ter
ritorial enterprise, but | realized even as
I did so the extreme unfairness of such a
remark. Not one Englishman in 1000 has
ever heard of that transaction. The purser,
who was listening, assumed an expression of
mulish contempt and remarked:
well. and whats Louisiana anyway"
And this was the view of the principal
accountant officer on board big liner sail
ing out of Liverpool!
WELL, I gave it up at last. It humili-
w ated me to lethargy. I gave it up.
When | was loudly assured that America
kept out of the war because she was scared
of England I held my tongue. When was
reminded that the Venezuelan question was
the reason America remained neutral I lay
low. When. | was asked why America
didn't walk into Mexico and conquer it if
she was so anxious to fight I declined to be
.rawn. Even when America came into the
war | knew better than to show any jubi-
lation.
The English character is something like
elm wood in grain, very tough, very
curly and liable to split open in unex-
pected directions. 1t won't do to hurry
when you are working on it. The average
Englishman, when he found all his previous
falsifed by America coming
into the war, coolly moved back to fresh
line of trenches and prophesied that "they
would never get over" When they began
to get over he moved back again and de-
cided that they wouldn't fight, but would
stay round in base ports, and SO on and
SO forth. There was no real racial malice
in all this, mind. 1t was simply the, subtle
poison of years of foolish misunderstanding
working out of the system, 1t is still work
ing out. What we have to watch now is
that the irresponsibes of both nations are
not permitted to inject any fresh virus of
suspicion.
DUT while Englishmen who know Amer
- lea have duty to perform for the bene-
fit of humanity there is another aspect of the
question which appeals more to the Ameri-
can publicist. ! mean the conception which
the average stay home Englishman has
of everyday American life. He is hardly to
be blamed for declining to take Americans
seriously when the big film corporations
food the market with stupid and preposter-
ous reels of so called college" and "wild-
West" life.
The main feature of American life-clubs,
exchanges, the libraries, the common access
to sports and pastimes which in England
are the jealously guarded prerogatves of
the rich--none of these come across in the
films which are shipped every week to Eng
land.
1t is not enough to say that this sort of
thing is to be sought in books. English
people 'of the stay at home sort will not
read American books. They will not even