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
There is no intention except to persuade, if possible, a few readers, at
least, that hatred of England is not wise, is not justified to-day,
and has never been more than partly justified. It is based upon three
foundations fairly distinct yet meeting and merging on occasions: first
and worst, our school histories of the Revolution; second, certain
policies and actions of England since then, generally distorted or
falsified by our politicians; and lastly certain national traits in each
country that the other does not share and which have hitherto produced
perennial personal friction between thousands of English and American
individuals of every station in life. These shall in due time be
illustrated by two sets of anecdotes: one, disclosing the English
traits, the other the American. I say English, and not British,
advisedly, because both the Scotch and the Irish seem to be without
those traits which especially grate upon us and upon which we especially
grate. And now for the letters.
The first is from a soldier, an enlisted man, writing from France.
“Allow me to thank you for your article entitled ‘The Ancient Grudge.’
... Like many other young Americans there was instilled in me from early
childhood a feeling of resentment against our democratic cousins across
the Atlantic and I was only too ready to accept as true those stories I
heard of England shirking her duty and hiding behind her colonies, etc.
It was not until I came over here and saw what she was really doing that
my opinion began to change.
“When first my division arrived in France it was brigaded with and
received its initial experience with the British, who proved to us how
little we really knew of the war as it was and that we had yet much to
learn. Soon my opinion began to change and I was regarding England as
the backbone of the Allies. Yet there remained a certain something I
could not forgive them. What it was you know, and have proved to me
that it is not our place to judge and that we have much for which to be
thankful to our great Ally.
“Assuring you that your... article has succeeded in converting one who
needed conversion badly I beg to remain....”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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