democratic
doctrines.

"We of all people ought to understand how a government can be cold or
semi-hostile, while the people are friendly with us. For thirty years
the American Government, in the hands, or under the influence of
Southern statesmen, has been in a threatening attitude to Europe, and
actually in disgraceful conflict with all the weak neighboring Powers.
Texas, Mexico, Central Generics, and Cuba are witnesses. Yet the great
body of our people in the Middle and Northern States are strongly
opposed to all such tendencies."

It was in a very brief visit that Beecher managed to see England as she
was: a remarkable letter for its insight, and more remarkable still for
its moderation, when you consider that it was written in the midst of
our Civil War, while loyal Americans were not only enraged with England,
but wounded to the quick as well. When a man can do this--can have
passionate convictions in passionate times, and yet keep his judgment
unclouded, wise, and calm, he serves his country well.

I can remember the rage and the wound. In that atmosphere I began my
existence. My childhood was steeped in it. In our house the London Punch
was stopped, because of its hostile ridicule. I grew to boyhood hearing
from my elders how England had for years taunted us with our tolerance
of slavery while we boasted of being the Land of the Free--and then,
when we arose to abolish slavery, how she "jack-knived" and gave aid and
comfort to the slave power when it had its fingers upon our throat. Many
of that generation of my elders never wholly got over the rage and the
wound. They hated all England for the sake of less than half England.
They counted their enemies but never their friends. There's nothing
unnatural about this, nothing rare. On the contrary, it's the usual,
natural, unjust thing that human nature does in times of agony. It's the
Henry Ward Beechers that are rare. In times of agony the average man and
woman see nothing but their agony. When I look over some of the letters
that I received from England in 1915--letters from strangers evoked by
a book called The Pentecost of Calamity, wherein I had published my
conviction that the cause of England was righteous, the cause of Germany
hideous, and our own persistent neutrality unworthy--I'm glad I lost my
temper only once, and replied caustically only once. How dreadful (wrote
one of my correspondents) must it be to belong to a nation that was
behaving like mine!