It is not possible to say how far the influence of one man may extend. I verily believe that twenty years ago those clothes of Matthew Arnold stood for more in America's estimate of England than the _Alabama_ incident. Ex-President Cleveland, as we have seen, speaks of the "sublime patriotism and devotion to their nation's honour" of the "plain people of the land" who backed him up when war with Great Britain seemed to be so near. But I wonder in how many breasts the desire for war was inspired not by patriotism but by memory of the Hon. S----y B----l. And when the Englishman thinks of the possibility of war with the United States, with whom is it that he pictures himself as fighting? Some one individual American, whom he has seen in London, drunk perhaps, certainly noisy and offensive. Such a one stands in the mind of many an Englishman who has not travelled as the type of the whole people of the United States. If it were possible for the two peoples to come to know each other as they really are--if one half of the population of each country could for a season change places with one half of the other, so that all the individuals of both nations would be acquainted with the ways and thoughts of the other, not as the comic artists draw them, nor as they are when they are abroad, but as they live their daily lives at home--then indeed would all thought of difference between the two disappear, and war between them be as impossible as war between Surrey and Kent. CHAPTER V THE AMERICAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS WOMEN The Isolation of the United States--American Ignorance of the World--Sensitiveness to Criticism--Exaggeration of their Own Virtues--The Myth of American Chivalrousness--Whence it Originated--The Climatic Myth--International Marriages-- English Manners and American--The View of Womanhood in Youth--Co-education of the Sexes--Conjugal Morality--The Artistic Sense in American Women--Two Stenographers--An Incident of Camp-Life--"Molly-be-damned"--A Nice Way of Travelling--How do they do it?--Women in Public Life--The Conditions which Co-operate--The Anglo-Saxon Spirit again. It will be roughly true to say that the Englishman's misunderstanding of America is generally the result of misinformation--of "parsnips"--of having had reported to him things which are superficial and untrue; whereas the American's misunderstanding of England is chiefly the result of his absorption in his own affairs and lack of a standard of comparison. The Americans as a people have been until recently, and still are in only a moderately less degree, peculiarly ignorant of other peoples and of the ways of the world.