"Indeed your memory is not very good. Your Monroe Doctrine, which insists that nobody from outside shall interfere with your affairs, escapes you whenever you want to interfere with other people's. You even forget, at convenient times, your own Civil War. Just as there was not a protest made by you against the methods of our blockade of Germany for which an answer could not be found in some precedent set by you in that War of North and South, so now the best answer to your sympathy with the preposterous claims of an Irish Republic is to be found in those four years in which you fought so bloodily to preserve the integrity of your own Union. "Yet you let men like DE VALERA go at large proclaiming the brutal tyranny of the alien Saxon and advertising his country as a Sovereign State--all because you have to 'placate' the Irish interest. I should very much like to hear what you would think of us if at our Elections we ran an Anti-You campaign and even made Intervention a plank in our platform (as one of your Parties did) for the sake of 'placating' the niggers or the Cubans or the Filipinos or any other sort of Dago in our midst. "Of course we are told--and of course I believe it--that the 'best' American sentiment is all right. But, if so, it must be cherished by a very select few, or they would never tolerate a condition of things so rotten that, unless your coming President finds some cure for it, you are like to become the laughing-stock of Europe. I am almost tempted to go into the Melting Pot myself and show you, as none but an American citizen would ever be allowed to show you, how it is to be done. Unfortunately I am too busy elsewhere, putting my own country right. "But to conclude--for I see that we are drawing close to the landing-stage--I do hope that in my desire to be genial I have not been too flattering. No true friend ever flatters. And in my heart, which has some of our common blood in it (notoriously thicker than water), I cannot help loving your country, and would love it better still if only it gave me a better chance. Indeed, I belong at home to a Society for the Promotion of Anglo-American Friendship. More than that"--and here the Sage was seen to probe into a voluminous and bulging breast-pocket--"I have brought with me a token of affection designed to stimulate a mutual cordiality." "_Not_ a flask of whisky?" exclaimed the representative of _The Democratic Elevator_, suddenly moved to animation.