writing from an American
camp in the east of France, appealed to myself and other writers to do
something to bring home to the popular mind of America a truer
knowledge of what the British Armies had done in the war. "I see
here," says the writer, "hundreds of the finest remaining white men on
earth every week. They are wonderful military material, and very
attractive and lovable boys. But it discourages all one's hope for the
future unity and friendship between us all to realise as I have done
the last few months that the majority of these men are entering the
fight, firmly believing that 'England has not done her share--that
France had done it all--the Colonials have done all the hard fighting,
etc.'" And she proceeds to attribute the state of things to the
"belittling reports" of England's share in the war given in the
newspapers which reach these "splendid men" from home.

A similar statement has come to me within the last few days, in
another letter from an English lady in an American camp near Verdun,
who speaks of the tragic ignorance--for tragic it is when one thinks
of all that depends on Anglo-American understanding in the
future!--shown by the young Americans in the camp where she is at
work, of the share of Great Britain in the war.

Alack! How can we bring our two nations closer together in this vital
matter? Of course there is no belittlement of the British part in the
war among those Americans who have been brought into any close contact
with it. And in my small efforts to meet the state of things described
in the letters I have quoted, some of the warmest and most practical
sympathy shown has come from Americans. But in the vast population of
the United States with its mixed elements, some of them inevitably
hostile to this country, how easy for the currents of information and
opinion to go astray over large tracts of country at any rate, and at
the suggestion of an anti-British press!

The only effective remedy, it seems to me, would be the remedy of eyes
and ears! Would it not be well, before the whole of the great American
Army goes home, that as many as possible of those still in
France--groups, say, of non-commissioned officers from various
American divisions, representing both the older and the newer levies,
and drawn from different local areas--should be given the opportunity
of seeing and studying the older scenes of the war on the British
front?--and that our own men, also, should be able to