THE YPRES TIMES
103
This great country has been made into a nation by the war, has learned how to
train troops, has the greatest organizing ability in the world in its midst, and has
immense wealth. Above all, it has enthusiasm. So well organized is it at present
that it could put two millions of troops in the field in a week.
Despite the praise that many Americans lavish on the products of our Public
Schools, they do not believe in our system of education. True there are many
Americans in our Public Schools, but as a rule they are the sons of wealthy parents,
with futures assured.
When I have defended our system I have been assailed on all sides. How
many times has it been pointed out to me that the two most successful men in the
literary world in England, George Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett, never
attended a Public School or University. H. G. Wells was at Dulwich, but he got
nothing from it, and so on.
The chief complaint is that the Public School boy knows what not to do, but
seldom has the initiative to do. Set him a job with the P's and Q's marked and he
will do it after his own fashion, but let him range loose on his own, will he
accomplish much
Take the war. How many people have told Americans that the Public School
boy won the war. They laugh at this statement. They know that so many of the
regimental officers in the later periods of the war, when the fighting, owing to the
increase of guns and ammunition, was most terrible, were men promoted from
the ranks, who as leaders of men were as good as any of the Public School type.
They think that too much repression in our Public Schools, sneering at
enthusiasm, and it's not done attitude, leads to a sensitiveness and lack of
initiative that often spells disaster in the battle of present-day life.
Many Americans are very sensible of the objectionable side of their children,
but they forgive it because they are trying to foster a self-reliant spirit. Read the
autobiographies and biographies of prominent American men, and it will be seen
how much importance is placed on self-reliance.
I am setting all this down not so much because I believe it, but because I
think that so many Britishers who meet Americans casually are misled by the warm
adulation of England so often expressed by them.
Make no mistake about it, America is a great and formidable nation to-day.
War is possible between Great Britain and America, but I am certain it will
never happen. Curiously enough, I base that opinion on one fact, and that is that
the Americans have fought beside us in the Great War. If they had not fought
by us in the war the great mass of Americans would not have thought we were
worth a two-penny damn.
A few months ago a prominent business man in New York told me that he
was an Englishman, and was not a bit surprised when I told him that I should never
have guessed it.
He told me that for thirty years he had been trying to hide that fact because
his colleagues so disliked things English. Now it is a different story. They
encourage him to talk of England and things English.
I have many American friends among men who fought in France with the
American Forces, and I have talked with them for hours. They have taught me
that a new Freemasonry has sprung into being. A Freemasonry founded on
nothing less than a feeling of brotherhood learnt in the war.
Yes, war between Great Britain and America is possible, but it will never
happen.
R. Henderson-Bland, Captain.
One of the Ypres League representatives, New York.
