Anglo-Saxon Solidarity

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

The most powerful appeal to the heart of the United States is the moral appeal. This is true of every other Anglo-Saxon country. If we needed proof, the recent war gave it. Great Britain was hardly less slow than the United States in getting her soul into the war. Whatever German polemicists may have said in their hymns of hate, there was no English conspiracy against their commerce, and Great Britain did not enter the war—I am speaking of the national consciousness of her people—to crush a trade rival. Without the invasion of Belgium, the cabinet would have had difficulty in getting Parliament to declare war. Without the constant effort to arouse and maintain the people in a state of moral indignation, which was never relaxed during the four years of fighting, the people of the British Empire would not have furnished millions of soldiers. We Anglo-Saxons are instinctively anti-militaristic, and we loathe war. We accept the burden of war only as a last resort, when we are driven to it. In a certain sense the United States was kicked into the war. We could not stand Germany pulling our nose and slapping our face any longer. But after we entered, the remarkable effort in manpower and money made by this nation was due not to spontaneous combustion, but to the clever propaganda of various official and unofficial organizations, ably assisted by a large element of the press.

If the call of blood and culture, as some tercentenary orators claim, enlisted us in the war, why were we deaf to it for three years? I am afraid that our passivity from 1914 to 1917 flatly contradicts the eloquent assertions made over loving-cups at Pilgrim banquets. The United States as a whole does not possess an Anglo-Saxon racial or cultural consciousness. But, despite our mixture of blood and cultural background, successive generations of development under Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence and polity have given us an idealism that is distinctively Anglo-Saxon. It was slow to awaken, but when it did awake, the people of this country, irrespective of origin, went into the war for the triumph of the ideals embodied by President Wilson in his war speeches. We believe that these were the ideals of our allies, for their statesmen had been telling us the principles for which the Entente was fighting ever since August 1, 1914.

But when the statesmen of the peace conference refused to abide by the principles proclaimed during the war, and upon the basis of which the armistice was concluded, they made impossible America's participation in the treaties. At Manchester, in December, 1918, President Wilson declared that the United States would never enter into any league that was not an association of all nations for the common good. How could it be otherwise? A formidable number of millions of Americans who fought Germany without hesitation because Germany stood for militarism and autocracy and imperialism do not believe they are called upon to sanction and enforce a sordid materialistic peace that makes some races masters of others. For the sake of idealism and for the United States they fought against kith and kin, or alongside of those they believed, rightly or wrongly, to be the oppressors of their race. But can we expect our compatriots of German or Irish or Slavic origin to support a European and world order based upon the permanent inferiority and subjection of the races from which they sprang?

Some unthinking Americans hotly answer in the affirmative, and revive the epithet of hyphenate. But in doing so, they reveal themselves to be very poor Anglo-Saxons. A sense of justice and an ability to put oneself in the other man's place are the Anglo-Saxon qualities par excellence. Being of pure British blood myself, I cannot help looking with contempt upon parvenus who are plus royalistes que le roi. The American of German or Irish origin who speaks and works for Anglo-Saxon race supremacy is a strange creature. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem" is sacred to the decent-minded man. The pride I have in my ancestry and the sense of partnership I feel in the history of my race enable me to respect others for thinking of Germany and Ireland as I think of England. Insisting that they foul their own nests is a poor test for recruits to Anglo-Saxon solidarity. Americans who maintain that it is our duty as good citizens of the United States to work for, or at least not to speak against, the material advancement of Great Britain because of kinship are appealing to a racial group and are as guilty of hyphenism as the propagandists of any other racial group. The reader interrupts me with the protest, "But you cannot put our comrade in arms, Great Britain, whose language and civilization we share, in the same position toward American citizens as Germany, our recent enemy!" Precisely so. I agree. But why? The blood argument I accept, but nearly fifty million Americans reject it. We must make the distinction one of ideals.

Our third basis of Anglo-Saxon solidarity is, then, harmony of ideals among the nations of the English-speaking world. Great Britain is drawn to us, the self-governing dominions are drawn to us, and we are drawn to Great Britain and the self-governing dominions because we have common ideals. And there will be no rapprochement unless this is so. Consequently, if we are honestly working for Anglo-Saxon solidarity and not simply setting forth sugared "pap" for public consumption, we shall on both sides tackle courageously shortcomings in following ideals not because we love to criticize, but because this is the only way we can remove sources of friction that threaten to disrupt Anglo-Saxon solidarity. In regard to Germany, Great Britain has acted admirably, and is living up to her ideals of fair play and of not kicking the other fellow when he is down. In regard to Ireland, on the other hand, we have a question that must be settled before genuine good feeling is established among the Anglo-Saxon states. Speaking for Ireland and not against her is the highest wisdom for the Anglo-Saxon propagandist in the United States. It proves that he himself believes in the Anglo-Saxon heritage of which he boasts, and that he is anxious to remove one of the greatest obstacles to Anglo-American friendship.

We are not going to get anywhere in our propaganda for Anglo-Saxon solidarity unless we emphasize the common idealism and strive to make the association of Anglo-Saxon nations a committee for giving Anglo-Saxon liberties to the whole world. This thought came to me with peculiar force when I stood on the spot in the Moses Taylor Pyne estate where are buried those who fell in the Battle of Princeton. On a bronze tablet are inscribed the words of Alfred Noyes:

Here freedom stood by slaughtered friend and foe,
And, ere the wrath paled, or that sunset died,
Looked through the ages, then, with eyes aglow,
Laid them to wait that future, side by side.

The "future, side by side" of English-speaking countries can mean only working for the spread of freedom. We shall not help each other to deny freedom to others, and if we did join in an Anglo-Saxon freebooting expedition across the world, we should quickly follow the law of pirates and be at each other's throats.

A poet might have ended his plea for Anglo-Saxon solidarity here. An orator certainly would. But, as I am in earnest and want my argument to remain with the reader, I must not leave it incomplete. Among the bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity, as in any human association, interest is the cornerstone. Men coöperate in no undertaking in which the element of mutual advantage does not play the preponderant rôle. Other factors are present, of course, and mutual interest may not be the exciting cause of entering into a common undertaking. But interest is the cement as well as the foundation of human society. If I were strictly logical, the three bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity already suggested ought to be made sub-divisions of the basis I call common interests.

What are these interests? Are they numerous and important enough to justify a close union among English-speaking countries? What particular interests would have to be sacrificed in order to further the common interests? Are the sacrifices possible? Is it worth while to make them? The World War and its aftermath make inevitable raising these questions. But those who, like myself, believe that the political and economic rapprochement of Anglo-Saxon countries is a possibility that ought to be carefully considered, will fail of appreciable results unless we are willing to discuss moot questions frankly and with detachment in good old Anglo-Saxon fashion and unless we realize the composite racial and cultural character of the American nation.