Disapprobation has ever been a powerful stimulus to the Saxon mind.  The heroic measures which it enforces command our faltering homage, and might incite us to emulation, were we not temperamentally disposed to ask ourselves the fatal question, “Is it worth while?” When we remember that twenty-five thousand people in Great Britain left off eating sugar, by way of protest against slavery in the West Indies, we realize how the individual Englishman holds himself morally responsible for wrongs he is innocent of inflicting, and powerless to redress.  Hood and other light-minded humourists laughed at him for drinking bitter tea; but he was not to be shaken by ridicule.  Miss Edgeworth voiced the conservative sentiment of her day when she objected to eating unsweetened custards; but he was not to be chilled by apathy.

The same strenuous spirit impelled the English to express their sympathy for Captain Alfred Dreyfus by staying away from the Paris fair of 1900.  The London press loudly boasted that Englishmen would not give the sanction of their presence to any undertaking of the French Government, and called attention again and again to their absence from the exhibition.  I myself was asked a number of times in England whether this absence were a noticeable thing; but truth compelled me to admit that it was not.  With Paris brimming over like a cup filled to the lip, with streets and fair-grounds thronged, with every hotel crowded and every cab engaged, and with twenty thousand of my own countrymen clamorously enlivening the scene, it was not possible to miss anybody anywhere.  It obviously had not occurred to Americans to see any connection between the trial of Captain Dreyfus and their enjoyment of the most beautiful and brilliant thing that Europe had to give.  The pretty adage, “Tout homme a deux pays:  le sien et puis la France,” is truer of us than of any other people in the world.  And we may as well pardon a nation her transgressions, if we cannot keep away from her shores.

England’s public utterances anent the United States are of the friendliest character.  Her newspapers and magazines say flattering things about us.  Her poet-laureate—­unlike his great predecessor who unaffectedly detested us—­began his official career by praising us with such fervour that we felt we ought in common honesty to tell him that we were nothing like so good as he thought us.  An English text-book, published a few years ago, explains generously to the school-boys of Great Britain that the United States should not be looked upon as a foreign nation.  “They are peopled by men of our blood and faith, enjoy in a great measure the same laws that we do, read the same Bible, and acknowledge, like us, the rule of King Shakespeare.”