autocratic, philosophical, and continental; England is
democratic, political, and insular. It is hopeless to suppose that the
great mass of the people of one country will understand the other,
and, for this is the important point, it is wholly unnecessary.

We get on best and with least friction with people whom we do not
understand in the least. A man may have known and liked people with
whose aims, opinions, employment, creeds he has the smallest sympathy.
One may mention such diverse personalities as John L. Sullivan, the
prize-fighter, Cardinal Rampolla, Mr. Roosevelt, Doctor Jameson, the
Kaiser, President Diaz of Mexico, numerous Jew financiers, Lord
Haldane the scholar-statesman, and a long list of professors, pious
priests, sportsmen, and idlers, not to speak of Hindus and
Mohammedans, Japanese and Chinese, and half a dozen Sioux chiefs. With
these gentlemen, a few of many with whom one may have been upon such
pleasant terms that they have even confided in him and trusted him
with their secrets, one may have passed many pleasant hours. It
probably never entered such a man's head to wonder whether they liked
him, and he never discussed with them the question of his liking for
them. We get on by keeping our own personalities, prejudices, and
creeds intact. There is no other way.

Other men will give even a more diverse list of friends and
acquaintances, and never for a moment dream that there is any mystery
in being friends with all. Nothing is ever gained by flattery. To the
serious man flattery in the form of sincere praise makes him more
responsible and only sadder, because he knows how much he falls below
what is expected of him, and what he expects of himself. Lip-flattery
makes a real man feel as though his sex had been mistaken, he feels as
though he had been given curling-tongs instead of a razor for his
morning toilet. These pompous flatteries that pass between Germany and
England to-day, make both sides self-conscious and a little ashamed to
write and to speak them, and to hear and applaud them.

America and England are shortly to celebrate the signing of the treaty
of Ghent, which marks a hundred years of peace between the two
nations. We have not been without opportunities to quarrel. We have
whole classes of people in America who detest England, and in England
there are not a few who do not conceal successfully their contempt for
America, but we have had peace, and since England, at the time of our