e have demanded. Moreover, what is almost
the most important item of all, his entire national life has been lived,
and that struggle conducted, in practical isolation from all contact
with other peoples. Immigrants, indeed, from all of them, the United
States has constantly been receiving; but as a nation the American
people has been singularly segregated from the rest of the earth,
blessedly free from friction with, and dependence on, other countries.
As we have seen, it has had no friction with any Power except Great
Britain; and with Great Britain itself so little that Englishmen hardly
recall that it has occurred.

It may be worth while to stop one minute to rehearse and to re-enforce
the points which so far it has been my aim to make.

* * * * *

For their own sakes, anything like conflict between the two nations is
not to be dreamed of; but, for the world's sake, an intimate alliance
between them in the cause of peace would be the most blessed conceivable
thing. There is every justification for such an alliance, not merely in
the incalculable benefits that would result, but in the original kinship
of the peoples, the permanent and fundamental sympathy of their natures,
and their community of ambitions and ways of thought. Unfortunately
these reasons for union have been obscured by a century of aloofness, so
that to-day neither people fully understands the other and they look,
one at the other, from widely different standpoints. By reason chiefly
of their isolation, in which they have had little contact with other
peoples, the Americans have come to think of Great Britain as little
less foreign (and by the accidents of their history as even more
hostile) than any other Power. Still acknowledging as an historical
fact the original kinship, they, like many a son who has gone out into
the world and prospered exceedingly, take pleasure chiefly in
contemplating how far they have travelled since they struck out for
themselves and how many characteristics they have developed which were
not part of the inheritance from the old stock. Dwelling on these they
have become blind to the essential family likeness to that old stock
which still remains their dominant trait. Moreover, seeing how during
all these years the old folk have let them go their own way, seemingly
indifferent to their future, at times, intentionally or not, making that
future none the easier of accomplishment, they have come