The sentiment of the Americans is unfriendly to us.  In spite of Princes’ travels, Fritz monuments, exchanges of professors, Kiel Week, and cable compliments?  Yes, in spite of all that.  We can’t change it.  And should avoid impetuous wooing.

The missionaries of the Foreign Office brought along with them in trunks and bundles across the sea the prettiest eagerness; but in many cases they selected useless and in some cases even injurious methods.  Lectures, pamphlets, defensive writings—­the number of the defenders and the abundance of their implements and talk only nursed suspicion.  Whatever could be done for the explanation of the German conduct was done by Germania’s active children, who know the country and the people.

The American business man never likes to climb mountains of paper.  He has grown up in a different emotional zone, accustomed to a different standard of values than the Middle European.  To feel his way into foreign points of view, finally to become, in ordinary daily relations, a psychologist, that will be one of the chief duties of the German of tomorrow.  He may no longer demand that the stranger shall be like him; no longer denounce essential differences of temperament as a sin.  The North American, among whose ancestors are Britons and Spaniards, Celts and Dutchmen, South Frenchmen and Low Germans, does not easily understand the Englishman, despite the common language; calls him surly, stiff, cold; charges him with selfishness and presumption, and has never, as a glance backward will show, shirked battle with him for great issues.  For the most part, to be sure, it remains the scolding of relatives, who wish to tug at and tousel each other, not to murder each other.

Only before the comrade of Japan did the brow of Jonathan wrinkle more deeply.  But every Briton swore that his kinsman would bar the yellow man’s way to Hawaii, California, and the Philippines, and put him in the fields of Asia only as a terror to the Russians or a scarecrow to the Germans.  A doubt remained, nevertheless; and we missed the chance of a strong insurance against Japanese encroachment.  Stroked caressingly yesterday and boxed ears today: 

Over there the dollar alone rules, and all diplomacy is a pestilential swamp; decency is an infrequent guest, with scorn grinning ever over its shoulder; the entrepreneur is a rogue, the official a purchasable puppet, the lady a cold-cream-covered lady-peacock.

The stubborn idealism, the cheerful ability of the American, his joy in giving, his achievements in and for art, science, culture—­all that was scarcely noticed.  Such a caricature could not be erased by compliments.

Before Mr. Roosevelt bared his set of stallion’s teeth (Hengstgebiss) to the Berliners, he had spoken cheerfully to Admirals Dewey and Beresford concerning the possibilities of a war of the Star-Spangled Banner against Germany.  And gentler fellow-countrymen of the billboard man said: