I can go as far as to say that, terrible as war may be, even war itself would be cheaply purchased if in a great and noble cause the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack should wave together in an Anglo-Saxon alliance.
Already the thought of a merger and the loss of our identity as a republic is coursing in a dangerous form through the minds of the people. It has been said that if a question is harped upon continuously for a sufficient period that people will go to war for the mere sake of putting the question out of their minds, and even now among the high and the low there is manifest a supine, an ominous spirit of submission to the surrender of their political independence rather than fight it as a form of open sedition.
The Rhodes trust fund and the Carnegie peace fund have their priests and priestesses, witness the statement of Mrs. John Astor, chairman of the American Red Cross in England, quoted in the New York “Times” of March 5, 1915: “An alliance of the English-speaking nations would be the greatest ideal toward which to work.” George Beer anticipated Mrs. Astor in the “Forum” for May, 1915:
The only practical method is to embody the existing cordial feeling between the United States and England in a more or less formal alliance, so that the two countries can bring their joint influence and pressure to bear whenever their common interests and political principles may be jeopardized.
In January, 1916, the late Joseph H. Choate, former ambassador to Great Britain, drank his memorable toast at a banquet of the Pilgrim Society: “I now ask you to all rise and drink a good old loyal toast to the President and the King.”
The prevalence of such sentiments gives us something to ponder. The war has been conducive to the propagation of seditious thought; we were kept too busy hunting down pro-Germans and imaginary spies to take heed of the intrigue being prosecuted under the Secret Will of Cecil Rhodes. That great constructive statesman was too practical to pursue an ignis fatuus; Mr. Carnegie was too much like him in that respect to create an enormous fund nominally for the preservation of peace, the interest on which, something like $500,000 annually, is available to propagate the cause of Pan-Anglicism, while in the meantime the Rhodes scholarships are filling American homes with the apostles of his creed. Their tracks are easily found, and they willbecome more frequent with the progress of time. Philipp Jourdan (John Lane Company, New York, 1911) speaks of 100 scholarships for the United States “to arouse love for England,” and “to encourage in the students from the United States an attachment for the country from which they sprung.” (pp. 75 and 328.)
What is good for Englishmen may seem good to Italians, French, Germans and Russians. In 1914 many laughed at the thought that Uncle Sam could be drawn into the European war and send several million American boys over to fight in order to make the world safe for democracy, but Colonial Secretary Chamberlain, had he lived his normal span of years, would have seen the “Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack” waving over something very near akin to his cherished Anglo-Saxon alliance. (See “[Propaganda].”)
Canada is being used to a great extent as a means of carrying out insidious projects against the United States. For a number of years special inducements have been offered Americans to settle in Canada, and large areas of farm land are in the hands of American immigrants. During the war many of these were compelled, in order to hold their property, to forswear their American citizenship, and many more served in the Canadian army as part of the British colonial forces. They were treated as colonials subject to British jurisdiction.
A project of more far-reaching extent is embodied in the movement to divert western traffic from New York to Montreal. The Canadian government has shown a tenacious purpose in this enterprise and is enthusiastically supported by the West and Northwest. It has promised to make seaports of the cities of the Great Lakes, from which vessels can go direct to Montreal and from there find an outlet to the Atlantic without reloading their cargoes. The object is to be accomplished by improving the Welland Canal and the cutting of a 30-foot channel in the St. Lawrence River. The Welland Canal connects Lake Erie with Lake Ontario, and its locks are to be increased 800 feet in length, 80 feet in breadth and 30 in depth. Those of our own barge canal are only 30 feet deep. The western chambers of commerce are enthusiastically in favor of the Canadian project, in view of the commercial advantage to be gained from this enterprise for a large area of western territory. It is probable that it will go into effect, and Americans will build up Canada at the expense of their own country.