This candid and manly statement, made by an English author and published broadcast for the instruction of English children, is one of the most interesting things I have encountered in England, and I have thought it worth while to quote it here in the interests of a still better understanding between the two great nations of the same stock, and the same speech, and the same political ideals.
A slighter indication of the same English breadth of view in regard to this question was given by the good ladies who have charge of the pleasant boarding house, on Torrington Square, which we have made our home on all our visits to London, and who, on the morning of the Fourth of July, thought of it themselves, and had a tiny firecracker lying by the plate of each young American in our party when we came down to breakfast, besides other indications later in the day of their readiness, though themselves staunchly British, to enter sympathetically into the enthusiasm with which Americans celebrate the natal day of our nation.
A movement has been started in London to erect a statue of George Washington. It was decided that the subscriptions should be confined to British subjects. Archdeacon Sinclair, in submitting the plan to the (Puritan) Society, said:
"Englishmen have at last fully recognized the great qualities of Washington. I feel assured that nothing will be more popular in this country than such a tribute to that great man of English birth, who has done so much for the world's history, not only for the young nation across the sea, but for Great Britain as well."
Archdeacon Sinclair announced that he was authorized to offer a place for the statue in St. Paul's Cathedral.
But now I find that I have become so much interested in the statement of this reversal of British sentiment concerning the American struggle for independence, that I have left myself no space to speak of the burning question in England just now, in regard to which the government has taken a position, extraordinary as this may seem, which violates the same principles of liberty for which the Americans fought, and so I must reserve that for another letter.
_P. S._--Since my return to America I have seen an interesting statement by the Rev. R. J. Campbell, of London, in regard to the steady increase of the pro-British feeling in the United States. He says that a book has just been published by an American barrister named Dos Passos, called _The Anglo-Saxon Century and the Unification of the English-Speaking People_. This gentleman, although of Spanish origin, is of American birth, and his interest in the future of his own country had led him to examine that of ours. He believes that the twentieth century is to be the Anglo-Saxon century, even more than the nineteenth, and the conditions of an alliance, as advocated by him, are as follows: