There were excellent reasons in international politics for England’s turning favorable, friendly, even enthusiastic eyes upon America. But there could not have been this present passionate, personal love, this daily and hourly working of that toothless old saw, “blood is thicker than water,” had there not existed a reason which appealed directly to the personal and family self-interest of every member of nearly every upper-class family in England.
And soon the German Emperor and those about him, all of a high and impoverishing nobility, began to work the same trusty, but never now-a-days rusty, old saw about the thickness of blood and water--are we not “Germanic,” we Americans? But the motive which is the less with the King and the upper classes of England is the stronger with our tempestuous German suitor--the motive of political, or, rather, industrial friendship. He feels that in dining and wining and treating, “just as if they were equals,” American owners of yachts and multi-millionaires, he is endearing himself to the American people. For, like practically the whole of Europe to-day, he thinks America is no longer a Democracy, but a thinly disguised plutocracy. And the more he reads and hears of the power and prestige of American multi-millionaires at home, the more firmly is he convinced that when he is tickling the vanity of these “dollar-swollen upstarts,” he is sending delicious thrills up and down the spine of the American eagle.
Yes, European princes and potentates are rubbing noses and back-scratching in the friendliest, most democratic fashion in the world, with such of the American people as can afford to visit Europe in royal luxury and get themselves admitted to royal inclosures. The object of these condescensions to our fellow-countrymen is to improve the relations between sundry European monarchies and the American people. A worthy object, as is any which has at bottom the promoting of peace on honorable terms. But Europe is wasting energy in misdirected effort. It assumes that these American beneficiaries have the same “rank” at home that similarly fortuned Europeans have in their countries. And, not unnaturally, it is confirmed in its false notion by many a petty success through this courtship of snobbish plutocrats and plutocratic diplomats.