hands of such
men [professional politicians]. There is a sad lack of the education of
the people in the direction of a common patriotism. . . . She must get
back to the sane idea that it is only as a nation and through the
national ideal that she can help humanity. . . . She has great men in
all walks of life; she has still the highest-toned Press in the world;
she has . . . the most ideal legislature, she has great universities and
churches with the finest and greatest Christian ideals. But none of
these influences are used, as they should be, for the general national
good. They work separately, or too much as individuals. It is only the
leavening of these institutions with a large spirit of the national
destiny that will lift Britain . . . out of its present material
slough." (_The Outlook_, November 17, 1906.) These words are almost a
paraphrase of Mr. Wells' indictment of the United States.

CHAPTER IV

MUTUAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS

America's Bigness--A New Atlantis--The Effect of Expansion
on a People--A Family Estranged--Parsnips--An American
Woman in England--An Englishman in America--International
Caricatures--Shibboleths: dropped H's and a "twang"--Matthew
Arnold's Clothes--The Honourable S---- B----.

"John Bull with plenty of elbow-room" was the phrase. It does not
necessarily follow that the widest lands breed the finest people; and
there is worthless territory enough in the United States to cut up into
two or three Englands. Yet no patriotic American would wish one rod,
pole, or perch of it away, whether of the Bad Lands, the Florida Swamps,
the Alkali Plains of the Southwest, or the most sterile and inaccessible
regions of the Rockies. If of no other use, each, merely as an
instrument of discipline, has contributed something to the hardening of
the fibre of the people; and good and bad together the domain of the
United States is very large. Englishmen are aware of the fact, merely as
a fact; but they seldom seem to appreciate its full significance.

Let us consider for a minute what would be the effect on the British
people if it suddenly came into possession of such an estate. We are not
talking now of distant colonies: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South
Africa--these may be equal together to more than another United States,
and they are working out their own destiny. The inhabitants of each are
a band of British men and women just as were the early inhabitants of
th