I have been reading a Life of George Washington, which has filled me with admiration of your stand against our Junkers of those days. And I am familiar with the way we outraged the sentiment of both the North and the South, in the days of your Civil War. No wonder your history books were not precisely Anglophile, and that Americans grew up in a traditional dislike of Great Britain! I am realist enough to know that the past will not vanish like a ghost――just because we have fought side by side in this war; and realist enough to recognise the other elements which make for patches of hearty dislike between our peoples. But, surveying the whole field, I believe there are links and influences too strong for the disruptive forces; and I am sure that the first duty of English and American citizens to-day is to be fair and open to understanding about each other. If anyone will take down the map of the world and study it, he will see at once how that world is ballasted by the English-speaking countries; how, so long as they remain friends, holding as they do the trade routes and the main material resources of the world under their control, the world must needs sail on an even keel. And if he will turn to the less visible chart of the world’s mental qualities, he will find a certain reassuring identity of ideals between the various English-speaking races, which form a sort of guarantee of stable unity. Thirdly, in community of language we have a factor promoting unity of ethics, potent as blood itself; for community of language is ever unconsciously producing unity of traditions and ideas. Americans and Britons, we are both, of course, very competitive peoples, and I suppose consider our respective nations the chosen people of the earth. That is a weakness which, though natural, is extremely silly, and merely proves that we have not yet outgrown provincialism. But competition is possible without reckless rivalry. There was once a bootmaker who put over his shop: ‘Mens conscia recti’ (‘A mind conscious of right’). He did quite well, till a rival bootmaker came along, established himself opposite, and put over _his_ shop the words: ‘Men’s, Women’s, and Children’s conscia recti,’ and did even better. The way nations try to cut each other’s commercial throats is what makes the stars twinkle――that smile on the face of the heavens. It has the even more ruinous effect of making bad blood in the veins of the nations. Let us try playing the game of commerce like sportsmen, and respect each other’s qualities and efforts. Sportsmanship has been rather ridiculed of late, yet I dare make the assertion that she will yet hold the field, both in your country and in mine; and if in our countries――then in the world.