Too Much Anglo-American Brotherhood, p. 3
Dublin Core
Title
Too Much Anglo-American Brotherhood, p. 3
Description
"When modern England and modern America touch and influence each other is it the right England and the right America that touch? It is the best meaning of the one nation that is meeting the best meaning of the other?
Doubtless America has really good matter to teach England; but does she teach it? Doubtless America has much to learn from England ;but is it learned?
England is too snobbish and oligarchical; but is American influence even tending to make it less snobbish or less oligarchical?America is too cheap and vulgar; but does English influence, where there is English influence, even tend to make it less cheap and vulgar?
Is it not unfortunately the fact that the very thing that modern America admires in us is our aristocracy, that the very thing that we admire in America is her mere pertness and “push?”
English praise is not a force recalling America to her primal republican ideal. American praise is not a force recalling us to a Merry England. We are not even flattering each other’s powers; we are encouraging each other’s weaknesses.America finds it convenient to be a little less republican; that is, a little less American. England finds it convenient to be a little less chivalrous; that is, a little less English. This simultaneous falling away they choose to call a falling together.
Americans on whom Benjamin Franklin would have turned his back embrace Englishmen whom Dr. Johnson would have kicked down stairs; and behold the wounds of an old war are healed! But neither people learns anything- except, perhaps slang. England certainly does not learn democracy. The Americanized English nobleman does not become an inch less of a nobleman; he only becomes rather less of a gentleman.
Lord Lansdowne at a Fourth of July festivity said that the mention of that date now involved no bitterness. This is quite true. The fourth of July has lost all its venom; and the simple reason is that it has lost all its meaning. What the Fourth of July originally meant we have no space here to inquire; it meant a great many things.
But one of the things it certainly meant was this, that there ought to be no such person as “Lord” Lansdowne in the world."
Doubtless America has really good matter to teach England; but does she teach it? Doubtless America has much to learn from England ;but is it learned?
England is too snobbish and oligarchical; but is American influence even tending to make it less snobbish or less oligarchical?America is too cheap and vulgar; but does English influence, where there is English influence, even tend to make it less cheap and vulgar?
Is it not unfortunately the fact that the very thing that modern America admires in us is our aristocracy, that the very thing that we admire in America is her mere pertness and “push?”
English praise is not a force recalling America to her primal republican ideal. American praise is not a force recalling us to a Merry England. We are not even flattering each other’s powers; we are encouraging each other’s weaknesses.America finds it convenient to be a little less republican; that is, a little less American. England finds it convenient to be a little less chivalrous; that is, a little less English. This simultaneous falling away they choose to call a falling together.
Americans on whom Benjamin Franklin would have turned his back embrace Englishmen whom Dr. Johnson would have kicked down stairs; and behold the wounds of an old war are healed! But neither people learns anything- except, perhaps slang. England certainly does not learn democracy. The Americanized English nobleman does not become an inch less of a nobleman; he only becomes rather less of a gentleman.
Lord Lansdowne at a Fourth of July festivity said that the mention of that date now involved no bitterness. This is quite true. The fourth of July has lost all its venom; and the simple reason is that it has lost all its meaning. What the Fourth of July originally meant we have no space here to inquire; it meant a great many things.
But one of the things it certainly meant was this, that there ought to be no such person as “Lord” Lansdowne in the world."
Creator
G.K. Chesterton
Publisher
Savannah Tribune
Date
1906-1-13
Collection
Citation
G.K. Chesterton, “Too Much Anglo-American Brotherhood, p. 3,” African American Fourth of July, accessed April 27, 2024, https://africanamerican4th.omeka.net/items/show/129.