Not a century had passed since the Tommy Atkins of that
day had burnt the Capitol on whose steps I was standing (a shameful
exploit, to which I allude only to point the contrast); and here was the
poet of Tommy Atkins so idolised by the grandsons of the men of 1812 and
1776, that I, a Briton and a staunch admirer of Kipling, had almost come
to resent as an obsession the ubiquity of his name!
It seemed then, that the rancour of the blue coat against the red must
have dwindled no less significantly than the rancour of the grey coat
against the blue. Into the reality of this phenomenon, too, I made it
my business to inquire.
II
There can be no doubt that the Spanish War has done a great deal to
bring the North and the South together. It has not in any sense created
in the South a feeling of loyalty to the Union, but it has given the
younger generation in the South an opportunity of manifesting that
loyalty to the Union which has been steadily growing for twenty years.
Down to 1880, or thereabouts, the wound left by the Civil War was still
raw, its inflammation envenomed rather than allayed by the measures of
the "reconstruction" period. Since 1880, since the administration of
President Hayes, the wound has been steadily healing, until it has come
to seem no longer a burning sore, but an honourable cicatrice.
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