It will be remembered that before there was an Anglo-American social life, relations between the mother country and the United States were the reverse of cordial. Many people in the States regarded this country with suspicion, many in this country looked upon the States with the contempt born of ignorance. Emerson, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others helped Englishmen to understand Americans, but perhaps the best work was done by women. As soon as they began to understand one another the divergent standpoints were brought into line, old prejudices were seen to lie no deeper than the surface of things. The freshness and vigour of American manhood, the honest, unconventional outlook of the country's womanhood were instantly recognised when social intercourse had been established and visitors from the States began to realise that in coming to England they were but returning to the land of their fathers. Mistakes are not immortal. The worst blunderer of a hundred years ago and the people who suffered most by the blunders have long been one in the dust to which all that is mortal of us must return. Latent and underlying sympathies have declared themselves. For thirty years I have watched the slow conquest of prejudice, the steady discovery of points of sympathy, the dismissal of the old stereotyped ideas that made for antagonism. To-day, when we are fighting for our life against a Power that has sworn to dominate civilisation or perish in the attempt, we find ourselves rich in the sympathy and moral support of all the North American continent, not only the British born of Canada are with us, but in the United States, despite the multitude of foreign influences and the great admixture of interests the general tone is manifestly sympathetic. The German menace has stirred Anglo-Saxon blood throughout the whole world. The observance of a strict and proper neutrality is no bar to American goodwill, our cousins know that this struggle has been forced upon us and that we would have avoided it had not honour forbade.
In the brief intervals of the work of organising the woman's service in my native county of Essex I have been trying to estimate the forces that have brought the changed conditions about, and I think I can see most of them. I have met most if not all the leading men and women of America, both in their own country and here, and no subject has been more completely canvassed in our conversations than the future that the Anglo-Saxon race may hope to share. My views, right or wrong, are my own, and I ask nobody to accept any responsibility for them; if they are correct they should help to explain the present and to indicate lines that the future may follow.