Germany were to
dominate the world, America, no doubt, would be ruined; but in all human
likelihood, Germany's impious attempt would have spent itself and been
broken long before it reached the coasts of America. America might have
stood out of the War in the assurance that her own interests were safe,
and that, when the tempest had passed, the centre of civilization would
be transferred from a broken and exhausted Europe to a peaceful and
prosperous America. Some few Americans talked in this strain, and
favoured a decision in this sense. But it was not for nothing that
America was founded upon religion. When she saw humanity in anguish, she
did not pass by on the other side. Her entry into the War has put an
end, I hope for ever, to the family quarrel, not very profound or
significant, which for a century and a half has been a jarring note in
the relations of mother and daughter. And it has put an end to another
danger. It seemed at one time not unlikely that the English language as
it is spoken overseas would set up a life of its own, and become
separated from the language of the old country. A development of this
kind would be natural enough. The Boers of South Africa speak Dutch, but
not the Dutch spoken in Holland. The French Canadians speak French, but
not the French of Moliere. Half a century ago, when America was
exploring and settling her own country, in wild and lone places, her
pioneers enriched the English speech with all kinds of new and vivid
phrases. The tendency was then for America to go her own way, and to
cultivate what is new in language at the expense of what is old. She
prided herself even on having a spelling of her own, and seemed almost
willing to break loose from tradition and to coin a new American
English.

This has not happened; and now, I think, it will not happen. For one
thing, the American colonists left us when already we had a great
literature. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Spenser belong to America no less
than to us, and America has never forgotten them. The education which
has been fostered in American schools and colleges keeps the whole
nation in touch with the past. Some of their best authors write in a
style that Milton and Burke would understand and approve. There is no
more beautiful English prose than Nathaniel Hawthorne's. The best
speeches of Abraham Lincoln, and, we may truly add, of President Wilson,
are merely classic English. During my own lifetime I am sure I have seen
th