CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
n K1Q Di?™'" Unlvers "V Library 
 
 Jnion of two great peoples : 
 
 3 1924 027 861 297 
 
With the Compliments 
 
 of 
 
 Professor W- Macneile Dixon 
 
 (University of Glasgow) . 
 
 Buckingham Gate, 
 London, S.W. 1, 
 England. 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 I CANNOT tell you how deeply you move me by your 
 generous English and warm-hearted Devon welcome. 
 I know that in spite of your good will to me your 
 welcome far transcends any mere personal compliment. 
 What you are here for and the reason you show me this 
 marked honour is that I am the representative of your 
 kinsmen across the sea. (Cheers.) 
 
 It gives me supreme pleasure to stand in this historic 
 spot facing the statue of your great admiral, Sir Francis 
 Drake — I will say " our " great admiral (hear, hear) — and 
 near the place where the Mayflower last left land, and to 
 see you who are of the same race of people, kindred to 
 them, I dare say, who sailed away to carry your ideas of 
 freedom into* the New World. We bring back that same 
 idea of freedom for the relief of the imperilled freedom of 
 the world. (Cheers.) 
 
 I shall never forget that it is on this historic spot that 
 His Majesty's forces by sea and land do me the honour to 
 place themselves in beautiful line, and they do my country 
 thereby the honour to express our kinship in blood and in 
 the high purpose of the task that now engages us. The 
 Mayflower sailed from here nearly three hundred years 
 ago with its precious freight. There have come back 
 American warships, no doubt with the descendants of those 
 same men, and on the soil of our gallant Ally across the 
 Channel there are already landed American troops to join 
 yours. (Cheers.) 
 
 The great Republic that I have the honour to represent 
 has, in the Providence of God, been prosperous. The 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 fruits of our prosperity now flow into the war coffers of 
 every Ally, and most welcomely. Our army, our navy, 
 our air service, and our treasury are yours for this common 
 purpose, and we are one with you not only in this common 
 purpose, but in all high purposes that free Governments 
 may have. No American can feel otherwise but at home 
 anywhere in England, but particularly in this great historic 
 place, and under these conditions in these historic times I 
 assure you I feel, and all the great people I represent 
 would feel likewise if they could have the pleasure of being 
 here, absolutely one of you. (Cheers.) 
 
 I am glad to stand here and, at the beginning of this 
 new era in the life of our race, to pledge the unwavering 
 fellowship of free men across the sea — that sea that once 
 separated us but now unites us. (Cheers.) I pay homage 
 here to the immortal memory of your great masters of the 
 sea, and especially of those sturdy heroes and spiritual 
 adventurers who sailed from this harbour nearly three 
 hundred years ago and carried to the making of our New 
 World that love of freedom which now impels us to come 
 to the defence of the imperilled freedom ,of the Old 
 World. (Cheers.) 
 
 The idealism of the Republic rests on their uncon- 
 querable spirit, which spirit we keep yet, thank God, when 
 a high duty calls us. In memory of them and in the 
 comradeship of this righteous war, whose awful shadow 
 will darken the world till we win, I greet you as kinsmen 
 and companions. We meet on the most tragic anniversary 
 in history. It is not a day to celebrate for its own sake. 
 What we shall be glad to celebrate will be the day of 
 victory and its anniversary for ever after. (Cheers.) 
 
 TO FINISH THIS TASK. 
 But before we achieve victory it is fit that we meet on 
 this dire anniversary to fortify our purpose, if it needs 
 fortifying, to pledge ourselves that the brave men who have 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 died shall not have died in vain and to reassert our 
 purpose to finish this task even if it exhaust the vast 
 resources and take all the valiant lives of the Allies in 
 Europe and of the Republic across the seas. (Cheers.) 
 For what would the future of the human race be worth if 
 the deliberate and calculated barbarism of our enemies 
 overran the world ? The supreme gift of free government 
 which this brave island gave to the earth, and to which all 
 free lands chiefly owe their freedom, would be swept away. 
 We do not need to review these terrible three years. 
 Everyone of us is constantly doing that whether we would 
 or not. For the war has shut most preceding experiences 
 and memories of normal and joyful tasks out of our 
 memories, but there are several facts that we may 
 profitably recall. 
 
 The chief fact is that the war was thrust upon us. Not 
 only did the Allied countries not begin it ; they did every- 
 thing to prevent it Documentary proof of this is abundant 
 and has so often and clearly been stated that I shall not 
 weary you with another recital of it. Another fact is 
 the persistent denial by German public men and soldiers 
 that the war was of their making. That is important not 
 only as a measure of their moral accuracy, but as an 
 indication of their method of retreat. They will appeal to 
 the pity of the world they set out to subdue. (Cheers.) It 
 is particularly proper for us on this tragic anniversary 
 to ponder on these large facts, while we strengthen our 
 resolve. After the war is ended and we can look back 
 calmly on these years they will, I imagine, stand out in our 
 memory as a horrible nightmare in certain moods, and in 
 certain other moods as a time of the heroic cleansing of the 
 earth of an ancient and deadly malady. (Cheers.) Military 
 despotisms have ever been one of the greatest evils of 
 human society; and we have now learnt that under modern 
 physical progress they are become far more dangerous as 
 well as far more loathsome than in simpler times. 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 THE BEST BY-PRODUCT OF WAR. 
 
 But, after these general reflections on the nature of this 
 great conflict, I think it will be proper to speak in this place 
 of sacred historic associations of one great by-product of 
 the war — the best of it — I mean the closer coming together 
 of the two great English-speaking parts of the world. 
 (Loud cheers.) No American can come to Plymouth 
 without thinking of the going of the English from these 
 shores to the new land where they set up a new freedom 
 and laid the foundations of the most prosperous and hopeful 
 community on the earth. 
 
 In the course of time these new communities fell apart 
 from political allegiance to the old land, but they fell apart 
 only in political allegiance. If we had need to discuss this 
 political divergence I should then maintain that that political 
 separation was just as well for you as it was necessary for 
 us— that by reason of it human freedom has been further 
 advanced and a new chapter in free men's growth opened 
 throughout the English-speaking world. (Cheers.) 
 
 The American Revolution was a civil war fought on 
 each side by men of the same race. And this civil war 
 was fought in the colonial assemblies and in your Parlia- 
 ment as well as on the battlefields in America, and it was 
 won in the colonial assemblies and in your Parliament as 
 well as on the battlefields of America, for from that day on 
 you have regarded colonies as free and equal communities 
 to the mother country, and you have had the happiness to 
 see them giving of their best for their help. (Cheers.) 
 
 Now this civil war naturally left a trail of distrust, the 
 greater because of the long distance between us by sail. 
 But when the first steamship came over the ocean, and 
 still more when the cable bound us together, a new union 
 began to come about, because these eliminations of 
 distance set the tide of feeling in the natural course laid 
 out by kinship and common aims. 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 THE TESTING OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 But in the meantime the American community had 
 developed in its own way, and our life had become more 
 and more different from life in this kingdom. We became 
 so fixed and so different in our conventions and ways of 
 life that we could not easily come back to your conventions 
 of life if we would. In fact there is no other test that the 
 British people have had — no test that any people has ever 
 had — which proved its great qualities so well as the British 
 settlement and management of America. Here were men 
 in a new land, cut off from close contact with their kinsmen 
 at home, who took their political affairs in their own 
 inanagement, and thereafter were without guidance of 
 support from their more numerous community left behind. 
 How did the race stand such a test? No other migrating 
 race has stood such a test so well, and those first English 
 colonists have now grown, by natural increase and by 
 numerous adoptions, into a people who to-day include 
 more English-speaking white men than the whole British 
 Empire. 
 
 They have not only outgrown in numbers all the British 
 elsewhere, but they have kept what may be called the 
 faith of the race. They have kept the racial and national 
 characteristics. They have kept British law, British 
 freedom, British Parliaments, British character, and they 
 are reared on English literature. I am not boasting 
 of my own land, I am only reciting how your race 
 has endured and survived separation from you and your 
 land. Our foundations were British, our political structure 
 is British with variations, our social structure is British, 
 also with important variations ; more important still, our 
 standards of character and of honour and of duty are your 
 standards, and life and freedom have the same meaning to 
 us that they have to you. 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 These are the essential things, and in these we have 
 always been one. Our admixture of races to make a 
 richer American stock is similar to the admixture of race 
 that went, in an earlier time, to the making of a richer 
 British stock in these islands. In most of our steps forward 
 in human advancement we have but repeated in a larger 
 land and under new conditions the steps that you took in 
 these islands in the struggling days of the making of our 
 race and in the beginnings of its institutions. During the 
 long period of sailing craft and before the telegraph we 
 lost no racial characteristics. We lost only close personal 
 contact. We lost personal acquaintance. We even had 
 sharp differences of opinion, which, in fact, is a quality of 
 our race. (Laughter and cheers.) 
 
 But if you review our history carefully you will discover 
 that no difference that ever arose between us was ever 
 half so important as it got credit for being at the time. 
 Most of them were superficial differences. Such as were 
 more serious found settlement — once again' by war and 
 many times by thorough study that led to understanding. 
 And when they were settled they were settled. That has 
 always been our way with one another, and it will always 
 be. We were, under the influence of swift communication 
 and travel, already losing our long isolation, and you were 
 relaxing your misjudgments, when our Civil War again 
 proved we were made of the same stuff that you were 
 made of, and we swung into a period of even closer 
 understanding. 
 
 THE HEROIC MOOD. 
 
 And now the day of our supreme test and of the heroic 
 mood is come. There is now a race reason why we should 
 have a complete understanding, and such a complete under- 
 standing has come. I hope you will pardon me for alluding 
 to these old differences, for they are now long-forgotten 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 far-off things. I allude to them only to clear the way, for 
 it is not the going of the Pilgrims nor the falling away of » 
 the colonies that we are met to celebrate to-night, but 
 rather the coming of American warships which symbolises 
 our new union. (Cheers.) Politically two peoples, in all 
 high aims and in the love of freedom we are one and must 
 remain one for ever. Not only have our warships come, 
 but our troopships have landed an army on the soil of our 
 brave Ally across the Channel, where the enemy yet keeps 
 the wavering line of an invader. And more warships will 
 come and more troopships — million-laden if you need them 
 — till that line is for ever driven back, until the submarines 
 are withdrawn or for ever submerged. (Cheers.) 
 
 There is coming the greatest victory for free government 
 that was ever won, and the day of this victory which we are 
 both fighting for may turn out the most important date in 
 history. The necessity to win it has cleared the air as no 
 other event in modern times has done, and but for the 
 millions of brave lives it has cost this clearing of the 
 air would richly repay all the treasure the war has 
 cost. For it has revealed the future of the world 
 to us, not as its conquerors, but as its necessary 
 preservers of peace. 
 
 GUARDIANS OF CIVILISATION. 
 
 Free peace-loving nations will have no more of this 
 colossal armed and ordered pillage, and no combination of 
 peace-loving nations can be made effective without both 
 branches of our race. This Empire and the great Republic 
 must then be the main guardians of civilisation in the future 
 — the conscious and leagued guardians of the world. 
 (Cheers.) 
 
 It is this that the war is revealing to us. It is not a 
 task of our seeking; but it is a task that we will, with 
 other free peoples of the earth, under God, gladly undertake. 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 To undertake it our comradeship must be perpetual, and 
 •our task is to see to it that it be not broken nor even 
 strained. That is our task and our children's task, and 
 their children's task after them, for we are laying new 
 foundations of human freedom. (Cheers.) Of course it is 
 the function of Governments to keep friendly nations in 
 proper relations to one another, and both our nations 
 fortunately can and do trust both our Governments to do 
 that. Through all the difficulties and differences that 
 arose between our two Governments during the early stages 
 of the war there was no rupture of friendly dealing. When 
 the full story of these years of delicate relations comes 
 to be told it will be seen that mutual toleration and 
 forbearance played a far larger part than a rigid insistence 
 on disputed points. Such differences as we had were 
 differences between friends. I am sure I may say without 
 impropriety that the two distinguished British statesmen 
 who were His Majesty's Chief Foreign Secretaries during 
 this period showed a spirit in their dealings with the 
 United States Government that put the whole English- 
 speaking world in their debt. (Cheers.) I am equally 
 sure that they would say the same thing for the Government 
 of the United States. 
 
 While fortunately our two Governments may be fully 
 trusted to bind us together in every possible way, Govern- 
 ments come and Governments go. In free countries they 
 are as a rule short-lived ; and they are always and properly, 
 even in the conduct of foreign relations, the servants of 
 public opinion if public opinion strongly asserts itself. Far 
 more important, then, than any particular Government is 
 the temper and action of public opinion in every country 
 such as ours, and permanent union in our large aims of 
 our two nations, generation after generation, for ever, must 
 therefore rest on the broad basis of a friendly and informed 
 public opinion in both countries. If this argument be 
 sound it leads every one of us to a high duty. The lasting ' 
 
 8 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 friendship of two democratic countries must rest on 
 the sympathetic knowledge that the people of each 
 country have of the other, even upon the personal 
 friendship of large numbers of people one with 
 another. 
 
 Personal friendships make for a friendly public opinion. 
 It is therefore the highest political duty of British citizens 
 and American citizens to build up political friendship by 
 personal knowledge and personal friendship. It is your 
 duty to learn all you can about the United States, about 
 the country, about its people, their institutions, their 
 occupations, their aims, and to make acquaintance with as 
 many Americans as you can. It may be you will not like 
 them all. (Laughter.) It may be you don't like all your 
 own countrymen. (Renewed laughter.) But you will, 
 I think, like most Americans. (Cheers.) Certainly most 
 of them like you. (Cheers.) Most of all, make an oppor- 
 tunity to come and see them and see their country, and 
 get a sympathetic knowledge of their methods and ways 
 of life. Make a proper appraisal of their character and 
 aims. 
 
 And of course this action must be mutual. In normal 
 times many thousands of Americans do pay visits to your 
 kingdom. They make pilgrimages. They come for 
 pleasure and instruction. As soon as the war ends they 
 will come again in still greater numbers. But in spite of 
 visits, either way or both ways, of large numbers of 
 individuals, each people has a vast deal of ignorance about 
 the other. This very day I saw a statuette of Benjamin 
 Franklin labelled George Washington. (Laughter.) It is 
 a priceless treasure that I shall take away from Plymouth. 
 (Renewed laughter.) Few merely private visitors get 
 beneath the superficial conventions. By deliberately going 
 about the task we may get far more thoroughly acquainted 
 than we can get by the mere interchange of personal 
 visits. 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 A SUGGESTED SCHOOL BOOK. 
 
 I venture to put together a few definite suggestions. 
 Put in your schools an elementary book about the United 
 States — not a dull text-book, but a book written by a 
 sympathetic man of accurate knowledge, 'which shall tell 
 every child in Britain about the country, about the people, 
 how they work, how they live, what results they achieve, 
 what they aim at ; about the United States Government, 
 about our greatest men, about our social structure — a book 
 that shall make the large facts plain to any child, and 
 require that every child shall read it. 
 
 A perfunctory book will fail. Have a hundred books 
 written if necessary till the right one is written. There is, 
 as you know, one great book written by an Englishman 
 about the United States — Lord Bryce's " American 
 Commonwealth." I wish it were read by as many persons 
 here as in America. But that is not a book for children ; 
 there ought to be a more elementary book. You have 
 often criticised certain old text-books of American history 
 on which American children were supposed to be brought 
 up — I was brought up on them, and I was never brought up 
 to hate the English. (Cheers.) You have properly criticised 
 them for laying undue emphasis on our war of revolution 
 and on the conflicts our forefathers had with your fore- 
 fathers. Now prepare a proper book for your own children, 
 correct any disproportions these old American school books 
 may have had, and give the chief emphasis not to our old 
 differences, but to our present likenesses, and to our 
 necessary close understanding for the future. (Cheers.) 
 
 On the American side the disproportion and the wrong 
 temper of these old books that have been so much criticised 
 arefast disappearing. Newer text-books have corrected this 
 old fault. On the American side I want to see a modern, 
 elementary book about Great Britain put into our schools 
 
 10 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 that shall tell children of the present Great Britain, and 
 point in the right spirit to the future. If we rear our 
 children to understand the friendly similarities of our two 
 peoples instead of lodging old differences in their minds 
 we may lie down and die at ease and entrust to them the 
 future not only of our two lands, but of the whole world 
 as well. (Cheers.) 
 
 LECTURES. THE CINEMA. THE PRESS. 
 
 Another suggestion I make is to encourage the giving 
 of popular lectures by well-informed Americans about our 
 country and our people. If you show that you wish to 
 hear them they will come. There is at this moment a 
 considerable number of well-informed countrymen of yours 
 lecturing in the United States on some phase of British 
 life and activity. I think they labour under the delusion 
 that they need to wake us up. (Laughter.) No matter, we 
 are glad to hear them. And a large and well-informed 
 group of my countrymen are in this kingdom lecturing on 
 phases of American life, perhaps also under the delusion 
 that they need to wake you up. (Laughter.) I heartily 
 hope that this popular form of instruction will continue and 
 grow long after the war. 
 
 It is a commonplace to say there is no other land so 
 full of pleasant and useful information for Americans as 
 your land and no people so well worth our intimate 
 acquaintance as your people, and it is equally true that no 
 other land and no other people are so well worth your 
 sympathetic study as the United States and those that 
 dwell there, for they have the spirit of the modern world 
 as no others have it. I hope you will pardon me if I say 
 that a visit to America and to your great colonies is an 
 excursion into the future of human society. 
 
 We ought, too, to welcome and encourage all sorts of 
 popular instruction, even moving pictures, if they show the 
 
 ii 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 right pictures. Another useful piece of the machinery of 
 popular education — perhaps the most useful of all — is the * 
 Press. Many of the most energetic editors of each country, 
 of course, frequently visited the other, but if visits of groups 
 of them were arranged and definite programmes were 
 made for them to touch the real spirit of the other country, 
 Letter results would follow than casual visits. Then if 
 either country or Government seems to do anything con- 
 trary to a proper understanding with the other, if then 
 instead of making judgments — newspaper judgments — at a 
 distance, a group of journalists who control the chief organs 
 of opinion in each country would themselves visit the 
 other country and make personal first-hand investigations 
 of what had gone wrong, many of our mistakes would 
 be corrected instantly, and wellnigh all our misunder- 
 standings would disappear before they arise. This is 
 the thing to do first to achieve right understanding, and 
 then it will be hard for a wrong understanding to arise. 
 (Cheers.) 
 
 I believe in the suggestion also that has been made of 
 regular personal correspondence between persons in each 
 country. In spite of the newspapers, accurate and full 
 information about what each country is doing to prosecute 
 the war is difficult to procure in the other country. I know 
 several gentlemen who got their best measure of opinion 
 of what goes on in the United States from American 
 correspondents. In addition to welcome information that 
 can thus be conveyed, there will be many cases of personal 
 friendship formed. That is the best bond of continuous 
 amity between nations. I think that much pleasure and 
 instruction would come of such personal correspondence. 
 Try it. (Cheers.) I might make many such practical 
 suggestions. Among them I should certainly include the 
 encouragement of British students to go to American 
 universities, where they will be most heartily welcomed, 
 and of more American students to British universities. I 
 
 12 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 should include pilgrimages both ways of them, as well as 
 of large bodies of educational workers. 
 
 You will say that all these things cost money. They 
 are less costly than ignorance. If our two peoples are to 
 come together, as we hope, travel must become much 
 cheaper than it has ever been. And, most important of 
 all, I would suggest frequent visits by our public men, 
 especially those who hold high office. I need cite only the 
 recent historic visit of Mr. Balfour to the United States 
 and his historic reception there. (Cheers.) I doubt if a 
 visit by any member of the Government of any people 
 since Governments began has had so great an effect as that. 
 
 TOWN "ADOPTIONS." 
 
 Now, none of these suggestions may prove practicable 
 to you, and whether any suggestion be practical for 
 any particular person or community can be tested only by 
 trial. But some plan is practical here in Plymouth, and 
 about this your judgment is better than mine. My plea is 
 that the people of every British community and the people 
 of every American community shall find a way to 
 inform themselves about the other country, and all such 
 information brings with it a closer sympathy. The 
 sympathetic understanding between any two free countries 
 depends on the number of citizens in each country who 
 themselves have a sympathetic understanding with one 
 another. One plan is that one town in each country should 
 " adopt " a town of the same name in the other country. 
 If you did that you would start with about fifty Plymouths. 
 (Laughter.) And then Great Britain and the United States, 
 who understand one another far better than any other two 
 great countries in the world, would come much closer together 
 if in every community in each country there were a group 
 of men who made the furthering of such an understanding 
 their particular business. There is no other task so 
 
 *3 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 important for the security of civilisation. I venture to say 
 that it is our duty thus to lay broad and deep the basis of 
 an everlasting unity. 
 
 OUR FELLOWSHIP IN WAR. 
 
 Most valuable of all the activities that lead to a 
 permanent sympathy is our present fellowship in war. 
 Americans now here confer daily with most Departments 
 of your Government, and your corresponding representa- 
 tives in the United States confer with most Departments 
 of the American Government, so that the greatest possible 
 unity of action may be secured. Our highest naval and 
 military officers are in command of our forces in your 
 waters and on the soil of France. (Cheers.) Our fleets in 
 your seas are constantly becoming larger and our advanced 
 army in France secures constant additions. The most 
 skilful American surgeons attend the Allied wounded of 
 all armies, and American nurses in ever-increasing numbers 
 assist them. American engineers and labourers are laying 
 railways behind the British and French lines. American 
 scientific men are giving their skill not only at home but 
 at the front to perfect scientific methods of making military 
 activities more accurate. American lumbermen are felling 
 your forests and cutting the trees for war uses. Labourers 
 under American engineers are building and rebuilding 
 military roads in France, and our money is pouring into 
 the war coffers of all the Allies. (Cheers.) 
 
 Most of all American fighting units, naval and army 
 and air service, are come and very many more will come. 
 They will all work side by side with your men and the 
 other Allies. Most of them, of course, are young men, 
 and, like your young men, the flower of our race. These 
 are forming companionships that nothing can sever. 
 (Cheers.) Men who go forth to die together, if fate so 
 wills it, understand one another as long as they survive. 
 
 14 
 
THE UNION OF TWO GREAT PEOPLES. 
 
 Beside the companionship of arms, formed where death 
 comes swift and frequently, other companionships seem 
 weak. For men's naked souls are then bared to one 
 another. In this extremest trial that men ever underwent, 
 anywhere and at any time, for any cause, where only the 
 high emotions and the guns are at work, everything else of 
 life is still or pushed out of consciousness. 
 
 And men who come together then are for ever 
 inseparable. Already there is many, many a corner of 
 a foreign land that is " for ever England," and presently 
 there will be many a corner of a foreign land that is an 
 American grave also. Those that die and those that 
 live will hereafter so bind our two peoples in mutual 
 understanding that any disturber of that understanding 
 will play but the poor part of a sacrilegious fool. 
 
 In comparison with this cementing of the two great 
 branches of our common civilisation how cheap is my poor 
 task or. any other man's, and how little worth while your 
 kind and patient hearing! Our common peril and our 
 companionship in staying it have already made us one for 
 ever. I greet you as kinsmen and companions in this 
 great effort to save the world. I shall leave you linked in 
 my memory with the undying recollection of these heroic 
 days which have made our peoples at one for ever in high 
 aims. (Loud cheers ) 
 
 Printed in Ureal Britain by Tai Fiilo & Qoiin (Hobici Cox) Ltd, 
 Bream't Buildingt, London, B.C. 4.