What was there in all this to make any merit of? Nothing
whatever. It was the simplest matter in the world--we had merely felt
and done what came natural to us. The really significant fact was that
any one in America should have been surprised at our attitude, or should
have regarded it as more friendly than they had every right and reason
to expect. In short, I felt an irrational but I hope not unnatural
disinclination to recognise as matter for question and remark a state of
feeling which, as it seemed to me, ought to "go without saying."
Above all was I careful to avoid the word "Anglo-Saxon." I heard it and
read it with satisfaction, I uttered it, never. It is for the American
to claim his Anglo-Saxon birthright, if he feels so disposed; it is not
for the Briton to thrust it upon him. To cheapen it, to send it
a-begging, were to do it a grievous wrong. Besides, the term
"Anglo-Saxon" is inaccurate, and, so to speak, provisional. Rightly
understood, it covers a great idea; but if one chooses to take it in a
strict ethnological sense, it lends itself to caricature. The truth is,
it has no strict ethnological sense--it may rather be called an
ethnological countersense, no less in England than in America.
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