oments when the stiff and frigid attitude of the British
foreign secretary exasperated the American negotiators, or when a
demagogic Secretary of State at Washington tried by a bullying tone to
win credit as the patriotic champion of national claims. But whenever
there were bad manners in London there was good temper at Washington,
and when there was a storm on the Potomac there was calm on the Thames.
It was the good fortune of the two countries that if at any moment
rashness or vehemence was found on one side, it never happened to be
met by the like quality on the other."

"The moral of the story of Anglo-American relations," Lord Bryce says,
"is that peace can always be kept, whatever be the grounds of
controversy, between peoples that wish to keep it." He adds that Great
Britain and the United States "have given the finest example ever seen
in history of an undefended frontier, along which each people has
trusted to the good faith of the other that it would create no naval
armaments; and this very absence of armaments has itself helped to
prevent hostile demonstrations. Neither of them has ever questioned
the sanctity of treaties, or denied that states are bound by the moral
law."

It is not strange that so many controversies about more or less trivial
matters should have obscured in the minds of both Englishmen and
Americans the fundamental identity of aim and purpose in the larger
things of life. For notwithstanding the German influence in America
which has had an undue part in shaping our educational methods, our
civilization is still English. Bismarck realized this when he said
that one of the most significant facts in modern history was that all
North America was English-speaking. Our fundamental ideals are the
same. We have a passion for liberty; we uphold the rights of the
individual as against the extreme claims of the state; we believe in
government through public opinion; we believe in the rule of law; we
believe in government limited by fundamental principles and
constitutional restraints as against the exercise of arbitrary power;
we have never been subjected to militarism or to the dominance of a
military caste; we are both so situated geographically as to be
dependent on sea power rather than on large armies, and not only do
navies not endanger the liberty of peoples but they are negligible
quantities politically. Great Britain had in 1914 only 137,500
officers and men in her navy and 26,200