America and England are shortly to celebrate the signing of the treaty of Ghent, which marks a hundred years of peace between the two nations. We have not been without opportunities to quarrel. We have whole classes of people in America who detest England, and in England there are not a few who do not conceal successfully their contempt for America, but we have had peace, and since England, at the time of our war with Spain, said "Hands off!" to the powers that wished to interfere, there has been a great increase of friendly feeling. But there has been little or no flattery passing back and forth. We have sent ambassador after ambassador to England who were almost more American than the Americans. Phelps and Lowell and Hay and Choate and Reid were all American in name, in tradition, in their successes, and in their way of looking at life. By their learning, their wit, and their criticisms, by their writing and speaking, by their presentation of the claims to greatness of our great men, by their unhesitating avowal in public and in private of their allegiance to the ideals of the republic they served, they have made clear the American point of view. Above all, they have shown their pride in their own country by acknowledging and praising the great qualities of England and the English. There has been no fulsome flattery, no bowing the knee to foreign idols, and what has been the result? The American ambassador for years has been the most popular diplomatic figure in Great Britain. An increasing number of Englishmen even, nowadays, know who Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln were, and our understanding of one another has grown rapidly out of this frank and manly attitude. We were jealous and suspicious a hundred years ago, as are England and Germany to-day, but we have changed all that by our attitude of good-humored independence, and by eliminating altogether from our intercourse the tainted delicacy of compliment, and the canting endearments of the diplomatic cocotte. We have emphasized our differences to the great benefit of the fine qualities that we have and cherish in common.