There Has Been And Is At This Moment A Terribly
Bitter Feeling Among Americans Against England, And I Have Heard
This Expressed Quite As Loudly By Men In The Army As By Civilians;
But I Think I May Say That This Has Never Been Brought To Bear Upon
Individual Intercourse.
Certainly we have said some very sharp
things of them - words which, whether true or false, whether deserved
or undeserved, must have been offensive to them.
I have known this
feeling of offense to amount almost to an agony of anger. But
nevertheless I have never seen any falling off in the hospitality
and courtesy generally shown by a civilized people to passing
visitors, I have argued the matter of England's course throughout
the war, till I have been hoarse with asseverating the rectitude of
her conduct and her national unselfishness. I have met very strong
opponents on the subject, and have been coerced into loud strains of
voice; but I never yet met one American who was personally uncivil
to me as an Englishman, or who seemed to be made personally angry by
my remarks. I found no coldness in that hospitality to which as a
stranger I was entitled, because of the national ill feeling which
circumstances have engendered. And while on this subject I will
remark that, when traveling, I have found it expedient to let those
with whom I might chance to talk know at once that I was an
Englishman. In fault of such knowledge things would be said which
could not but be disagreeable to me; but not even from any rough
Western enthusiast in a railway carriage have I ever heard a word
spoken insolently to England, after I had made my nationality known.
I have learned that Wellington was beaten at Waterloo; that Lord
Palmerston was so unpopular that he could not walk alone in the
streets; that the House of Commons was an acknowledged failure; that
starvation was the normal condition of the British people, and that
the queen was a blood-thirsty tyrant.
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