laundry--the two ladies are enabled
to say the most dreadful things to one another without any one being a
penny the worse. _They do not understand one another's language._ But
if they speak a common tongue, the words which pass when the most
ephemeral squabble arises stick and rankle.

Again, for many years the people of Great Britain were extremely
critical of Russia. Well-meaning stay-at-home gentlemen constantly
rose to their feet in the House of Commons and made withering remarks
on the subject of knouts, and Cossacks, and vodka. But they did no
harm. The Russian people do not understand English. In the same way,
Russians were probably accustomed to utter equally reliable criticisms
of the home-life of Great Britain--land-grabbing, and hypocrisy, and
whiskey, and so on. But we knew nothing of all this, and all was well.
There was not the slightest difficulty, when the great world-crash
came, in forming the warmest alliance with Russia.

But as between the two great English-speaking nations of the world, it
is in the power of the most foolish politician or the most
irresponsible sub-editor, on either side of the Atlantic, to create an
international complication with a single spoken phrase or stroke of
the pen. And as both countries appear to be inhabited very largely by
persons who regard newspapers as Bibles and foolish politicians as
inspired prophets, it seems advisable to take steps to regulate the
matter.

This brings us to another matter--the attitude of the American Press
toward the War. A certain section thereof, which need not be
particularized further, has never ceased, probably under the combined
influences of bias and subsidy, to abuse the Allies, particularly the
British, and misrepresent their motives and ideals. This sort of
journalism "cuts no ice" in the United States. It is just "yellow
journalism." _Voila tout!_ Why take it seriously? But the British
people do not know this; and as the British half-penny Press, when it
does quote the American Press, rarely quotes anything but the most
virulent extracts from this particular class of newspaper, one is
reduced yet again to wondering whence the blessings of a common
language are to be derived.

But taking them all round, the newspapers of America have handled the
questions of the War with conspicuous fairness and ability. They are
all fundamentally pro-Ally; and the only criticism which can be
directed at them from an Allied quarter is that in t