The Pan-Angles: A Consideration of the Federation of the Seven English-Speaking NationsKennedy, Sinclair
History
The Pan-Angles: A Consideration of the Federation of the Seven English-Speaking Nations
Kennedy, Sinclair
Anglo-Saxon race; Great Britain -- Colonies; Great Britain -- Relations -- United States; United States -- Relations -- Great Britain
British blood, moreover, has not in the meantime been stagnant.
Through these centuries, as from earliest history, it has been
constantly enriched and invigorated by admixtures from the
continent of Europe. To the British Isles, South Africa,
Newfoundland, Canada, and the United States, non-British peoples
have come. Even New Zealand and Australia, almost purely British
as they are, have their French and German settlements
respectively. In the British Isles the reception and absorption
of foreign stocks has been unspectacular. Individuals, or from
time to time groups, seeking the larger tolerance of England,
have taken up an abode there. One has but to observe and listen
in the streets to be convinced that foreign invaders, though
with no hostile intent, still land on British soil. Outside the
British Isles, this replenishing of the British stock by
"foreign" immigrants often presents features that are
spectacular--especially where the bulk of the foreigners now
arrive--in the United States and Canada.[24-1]
{25}
The immigrant often comes with no ability to speak English or to
understand the habits of mind and forms of government of those
who do. He may never have been proudly conscious of any
nationality. But in an amazingly brief length of time, we find
him taking his place among his Pan-Angle fellows and conducting
himself as one of them. In one generation he is transformed into
a Pan-Angle.
This process of assimilation was formerly unconscious on the
part of the receiving nations. Now, as the task has grown more
stupendous, special machineries in the way of day and night
schools and settlement clubs and classes have been devised in
the larger centres, and are maintained at the expense of the
public. The immigrant, safely arrived, finds himself still
outside the unyielding wall of the English language. He cannot
ask for food or work. Even those from his former country talk
English together, and jeer at his ignorance. By hard experience
and whatever help is offered, he qualifies himself in this first
requisite. With his English he acquires much else. He learns
words which express ideas peculiar to Pan-Angle psychology. From
the words he progresses to the ideas themselves. Thus he learns
somewhat of the theory of law and government, and of the
aspirations and ideals, and of the expected privileges that have
evolved with this language. The pride of the Pan-Angle comes
over him, and a faith in those precepts of individual freedom of
which he {26} had never dreamed, it may be, until he learned to
read and talk of them in English. "An Englishman's house is his
castle." Here is a promise of privacy perhaps unknown in the
land he has quitted. "Government derives its just powers from
the consent of the governed." This is a long step from the
doctrine of the Divine Right of kings. Thus with the language
goes an atmosphere of many things that are not to be translated,
historical heritages which the immigrant must substitute for
those of his birth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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