Mr. Freeman makes the shrewd remark that "the American feels a greater distinction between himself and the Englishman of Britain than the Englishman of Britain feels between himself and the American," which remains entirely true to-day, in spite of the seemingly paradoxical fact that the American knows more of English history and English politics than the Englishman knows of the politics and history of the United States. This by no means implies that the American knows more of the English character than the Englishman knows of his. On the contrary, the Americans have seen infinitely less of the world than Englishmen, and however many of the bare facts of English history and English politics they may know, they are strangely ignorant of the atmosphere to which those facts belong, and have never learned how much more foreign to them other foreign nations are. The individual American will take the individual Englishman into his friendship--will even accept him as a sort of a relative--but as a political entity Great Britain is almost as much a foreign nation as any. The casual Englishman visiting the United States for but a short time will probably not discover this fact. He only knows that he is cordially received himself--even more cordially, he feels, than he deserves--and most probably those persons, especially the ladies, whom he meets will assure him that they are "devoted" to England. He may not have time to discover that that devotion is not universal. Only after a while, in all probability, will the fact as stated by Mr. Freeman dawn upon him, and he will somehow be aware that with all the charming hospitality that he receives he is in some way treated as more of a foreigner than he is conscious of being. It is necessary that he should have some extended residence in the country--unless his visit happens to coincide with such an incident as the Venezuelan controversy or the outbreak of the Boer War--before things group themselves in at all their right perspective before his eyes. The intensity of the feeling displayed at the time of the Venezuelan incident came as a shock to Englishmen at home; but those who had lived for any length of time in America (west of New York) were not surprised. It is probable that the greater number of the American people at that time wished for war, and believed that it was nothing but cowardice on the part of Great Britain--her constitutional dislike of fighting anybody of her own size, as a number of the papers pleasantly phrased it--that prevented their wish from being gratified.