ANTI-ENGLISH FEELING AMONG THE GERMANS AND ITS CAUSES.

It is well known how apt people are, after they have paid a visit to Paris or to the Rhine, to give us their opinion about the French or about the Germans, in general. They may have spoken to a dozen of each nationality, but their conversation with these few individuals was very likely to have been extremely scant and scrappy. Yet for all that they have formed their opinion, and whenever the subject turns up they are always ready to judge millions by the few they have seen. They will declare all Frenchmen to be untrustworthy, all Germans to be rude, or, on the contrary, all Frenchmen to be charming, and all Teutons to be very learned. Their opinion has been formed, and if anybody differs from them they have always one reply: "We have been to Paris," or "We have been to Cologne."

The citizens of the United States fare even worse. They are generally judged from what is seen of Americans spending their holidays in England, whether on a personally conducted tour or travelling with families and servants, whether hailing from Boston or from Chicago or elsewhere; and the result of this combined photograph may well be imagined. Yet it is curious to see how lasting these impressions are, and how constantly they come to the surface again in conversations and discussions, though, if pressed a little, the detractors as well as

Copyright, 1899 by The Forum Publishing Company.
Permission to republish articles is reserved.

1

fortune, or at all events, after having secured an independence for themselves and their children, come to England, to the old country, and stay there and feel at home, as if they had been born in it? These Anglo-Americans are outspoken enough, but do we hear from them any scurrilous abuse of things English? They are republicans at heart, no doubt, but do they wish for a better commonwealth than they find in England under the present Queen and Parliament?

There

And where are English of any distinction received with more generous and hearty hospitality than in the United States? Our best men of science are invited to lecture there; our theatre companies migrate to New York, and American actors fill their places in England. are, no doubt, differences between English and Americans-each party knows them but they are so difficult to define, particularly if they are to be made intelligible to strangers, that we are told of a recent proposal at the Exhibition in Paris to distinguish Americans by a visible badge, so that they might not be mistaken for English, who are not over-popular in the French capital just now. Could they not be recognized without such a badge? We ourselves can easily detect an American by his accent, though there is little of that accent in the Southern States.

Froude was praised in America for the excellent English of his lectures; but, as a newspaper remarked, he was sometimes hardly intelligible on account of his strong English accent. Why should not the Americans have their own accent, like the Scotch and the Irish, without in any way being ashamed of it. There was a well-known professor at Oxford who invariably dropped his h's. This is considered a great sin; but "Why should I pronounce all these h's?" said he. "In the county where I was born and bred they did not pronounce an h at the beginning of a word, just as we omit it in 'honor' and 'hour.' And have not the English dropped the old h in such words as which, and when, thus confusing which and witch; likewise in why, though always pronouncing and writing the h in how. Such variations, though they startle us at first, may well be tolerated, and they exist more or less in all dialects.

But while in all these respects, in language, in science, in art, in political and ethical principles, and in religion also, the people of the United States and of England may be called one people, varying only slightly, like dialect varieties of one and the same language, one can hardly trust one's eyes in reading some of the English and American newspapers, which pour the most villainous abuse on each other,

COPYRIGHT, 1900,

BY THE FORUM PUBLISHING COMPANY.

Press of Wm. M. Jennings, New York.

The Campaign of 1900 from a Democratic Point of View W. J. STONE 99 American Census Methods

PROF. WALTER F. WILLCOX 109