* * * * * Critics will, of course, ridicule this offhand dismissing in a few sentences of the largest of world problems. Each one of several propositions which I have advanced breaks rudely ground where angels might fear to tread; each one ought to be put forth cautiously with much preamble and historical introduction, to be circuitously argued through several hundred pages; but that cannot be done here because those propositions are not the main topic of this book. At the same time they must be stated, however baldly, because they represent the basis on which my plea for any immediate Anglo-American co-operation in the cause of peace must rest. I am also fully conscious of the hostility which almost everything that I say will provoke from one or another section of the American people, but I am not addressing the irreconcilables of any foreign element of the population of the United States. I am talking to the reasoning, intelligent mass of the two peoples as a whole. The subject of an Anglo-American alliance is one of which it is the fashion to hush up any attempt at the discussion in public. It must be spoken of in whispers. It is better--so the argument runs--to let American good-will to England grow of itself; an effort to hasten it will but hurt American susceptibilities. In the first place this idea rests largely on an exaggerated estimate of the power of the Irish politician, a power which happily is coming every day to be more nearly a thing of the past,--"tending," as Carlyle says, "visibly not to be." In the second place, I believe that I understand American susceptibilities; and they will not be hurt by any one who shows that he does understand. What the American resents bitterly is the arrogant and superficial criticism of the foreigner who sums up the characteristics and destiny of the nation after a few weeks of observation. Moreover, Americans do not as a rule like whispering or the attempt to come at things by by-paths--in which they much resemble the English. When they want a thing they commonly ask for it--distinctly. When they think a thing ought to be done they prefer to say so--unequivocally. They have not much love for the circuitousnesses of diplomacy; and if England desires American co-operation in what is a great and noble cause she had much better ask for it--bluntly. Personally I wish that forty million Englishmen would stand up and shout the request all at once. FOOTNOTES: [8:1] Since this was written, the Anglo-Russian agreement has been arrived at. [10:1] Justin H. Smith, _Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony_, Putnams, 1907. [15:1] _The Bellman_, Minneapolis, Dec. 22, 1906.