A Straight Deal; Or, The Ancient GrudgeWister, Owen
History
A Straight Deal; Or, The Ancient Grudge
Wister, Owen
Great Britain -- Relations -- United States; United States -- Relations -- Great Britain
As to Winston Churchill’s declaration that Great Britain will not
surrender her control of the seas, I am as little shocked by that as
I should be were our Secretary of the Navy to declare that in no
circumstances would we give up control of the Panama Canal. The Panama
Canal is our carotid artery, Great Britain’s navy is her jugular vein.
It is her jugular vein in the mind of her people, regardless of that new
apparition, the submarine. I was not shocked that Great Britain should
decline Mr. Wilson’s invitation that she cut her jugular vein; it was
the invitation which kindled my emotions; but these were of a less
serious kind.
The last letter that I shall give is from an American citizen of English
birth.
“As a boy at school in England, I was taught the history of the American
Revolution as J. R. Green presents it in his Short History of the
English People. The gist of this record, as you doubtless recollect, is
that George III being engaged in the attempt to destroy what there then
was of political freedom and representative government in England, used
the American situation as a means to that end; that the English people,
in so far as their voice could make itself heard, were solidly against
both his English and American policy, and that the triumph of America
contributed in no small measure to the salvation of those institutions
by which the evolution of England towards complete democracy was made
possible. Washington was held up to us in England not merely as a great
and good man, but as an heroic leader, to whose courage and wisdom the
English as well as the American people were eternally indebted....
“Pray forgive so long a letter from a stranger. It is prompted... by a
sense of the illimitable importance, not only for America and Britain,
but for the entire world, of these two great democratic peoples knowing
each other as they really are and cooperating as only they can cooperate
to establish and maintain peace on just and permanent foundations.”
Chapter III: In Front of a Bulletin Board
There, then, are ten letters of the fifty which came to me in
consequence of what I wrote in May, 1918, which was published in the
American Magazine for the following November. Ten will do. To read the
other forty would change no impression conveyed already by the ten, but
would merely repeat it. With varying phraseology their writers either
think we have hitherto misjudged England and that my facts are to the
point, or they express the stereotyped American antipathy to England
and treat my facts as we mortals mostly do when facts are
embarrassing--side-step them. What best pleased me was to find that
soldiers and sailors agreed with me, and not “high-brows” only.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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