A Straight Deal

or
The Ancient Grudge

by Owen Wister
To Edward and Anna Martin who give help in time of trouble

Chapter I: Concerning One's Letter Box
Publish any sort of convictionrelated to these morose days through which

we are living and letters will shower upon you like leaves in October. No
matter what your conviction be, it will shake both yeas and nays loose

from various minds where they were hanging ready to fall. Never was a
time when so many brains rustled with hates and panaceas that would sail

wide into the air at the lightest jar. Try it and see. Say that you
believe in God, or do not; say that Democracy is the key to the

millennium, or the survival of the unfittest; that Labor is worse than
the Kaiser, or better; that drink is a demon, or that wine ministers to

the health and the cheer of man--say what you please, and the yeas and
nays will pelt you. So insecurely do the plainest, oldest truths dangle

in a mob of disheveled brains, that it is likely, did you assert twice
two continues to equal four and we had best stick to the multiplication

table, anonymous letters would come to you full of passionate abuse.
Thinking comes hard to all of us. To some it never comes at all, because

their heads lack the machinery. How many of such are there among us, and
how can we find them out before they do us harm? Science has a test for

this. It has been applied to the army recruit, but to the civilian voter
not yet. The voting moron still runs amuck in our Democracy. Our native

American air is infected with alien breath. It is so thick with opinions
that the light is obscured. Will the sane ones eventuallyprevail and

heal the sick atmosphere? We must at least assume so. Else, how could we
go on?

Chapter II: What the Postman Brought
During the winter of 1915 I came to think that Germany had gone

dangerously but methodically mad, and that the European War vitally
concerned ourselves. This conviction I put in a book. Yeas and nays

pelted me. Time seems to show the yeas had it.
During May, 1918, I thought we made a mistake to hate England. I said so

at the earliest opportunity. Again came the yeas and nays. You shall see
some of these. They are of help. Time has not settled this question. It

is as alive as ever--more alive than ever. What if the Armistice was
premature? What if Germany absorb Russia and join Japan? What if the

League of Nations break like a toy?
Yeas and nays are put here without the consent of their writers, whose

names, of course, do not appear, and who, should they ever see this, are
begged to take no offense. None is intended.

There is no intention except to persuade, if possible, a few readers, at
least, that hatred of England is not wise, is not justified to-day, and

has never been more than partly justified. It is based upon three
foundations fairly distinct yet meeting and merging on occasions: first

and worst, our school histories of the Revolution; second, certain
policies and actions of England since then, generally distorted or

falsified by our politicians; and lastly certain national traits in each
country that the other does not share and which have hitherto produced

perennial personal friction between thousands of English and American
individuals of every station in life. These shall in due time be

illustrated by two sets of anecdotes: one, disclosing the English traits,
the other the American. I say English, and not British, advisedly,

because both the Scotch and the Irish seem to be without those traits
which especially grate upon us and upon which we especially grate. And

now for the letters.
The first is from a soldier, an enlisted man, writing from France.

"Allow me to thank you for your article entitled 'The Ancient Grudge.'
... Like many other young Americans there was instilled in me from early

childhood a feeling of resentment against our democratic cousins across
the Atlantic and I was only too ready to accept as true those stories I

heard of England shirking her duty and hiding behind her colonies, etc.
It was not until I came over here and saw what she was really doing that

my opinion began to change.
"When first my division arrived in France it was brigaded with and

received its initial experience with the British, who proved to us how
little we really knew of the war as it was and that we had yet much to

learn. Soon my opinion began to change and I was regarding England as the
backbone of the Allies. Yet there remained a certain something I could

not forgive them. What it was you know, and have proved to me that it is
not our place to judge and that we have much for which to be thankful to

our great Ally.
"Assuring you that your ... article has succeeded in converting one who

needed conversion badly I beg to remain...."
How many American soldiers in Europe, I wonder, have looked about them,

have used their sensible independent American brains (our very best
characteristic), have left school histories and hearsay behind them and

judged the English for themselves? A good many, it is to be hoped. What
that judgment finally becomes must depend not alone upon the personal

experience of each man. It must also come from that liberality of outlook
which is attained only by getting outside your own place and seeing a lot

of customs and people that differ from your own. A mind thus seasoned and
balanced no longer leaps to an opinion about a whole nation from the

sporadic conduct of individual members of it. It is to be feared that
some of our soldiers may never forget or make allowance for a certain

insult they received in the streets of London. But of this later. The
following sentence is from a letter written by an American sailor:

"I have read... 'The Ancient Grudge' and I wish it could be read by
every man on our big ship as I know it would change a lot of their

attitude toward England. I have argued with lots of them and have shown
some of them where they are wrong but the Catholics and descendants of

Ireland have a different argument and as my education isn't very great, I
know very little about what England did to the Catholics in Ireland."

Ireland I shall discuss later. Ireland is no more our business to-day
than the South was England's business in 1861. That the Irish question

should defeat an understanding between ourselves and England would be, to
quote what a gentleman who is at once a loyal Catholic and a loyal member

of the British Government said to me, "wrecking the ship for a
ha'pennyworth of tar."

The following is selected from the nays, and was written by a business
man. I must not omit to say that the writers of all these letters are

strangers to me.
"As one American citizen to another... permit me to give my personal

view on your subject of 'The Ancient Grudge'...
"To begin with, I think that you start with a false idea of our kinship--

with the idea that America, because she speaks the language of England,
because our laws and customs are to a great extent of the same origin,

because much that is good among us came from there also, is essentially
of English character, bound up in some way with the success or failure of

England.
"Nothing, in my opinion, could be further from the truth. We are a

distinctive race--no more English, nationally, than the present King
George is German--as closely related and as alike as a celluloid comb and

a stick of dynamite.
"We are bound up in the success of America only. The English are bound up

in the success of England only. We are as friendly as rival corporations.
We can unite in a common cause, as we have, but, once that is over, we

will go our own way--which way, owing to the increase of our shipping and
foreign trade, is likely to become more and more antagonistic to

England's.
"England has been a commercially unscrupulous nation for generations and

it is idle to throw the blame for this or that act of a nation on an
individual. Such arguments might be kept up indefinitely as regards an

act of any country. A responsible nation must bear the praise or odium
that attaches to any national action. If England has experienced a change

of heart it has occurred since the days of the Boer Republic--as wanton a
steal as Belgium, with even less excuse, and attended with sufficient

brutality for all practical purposes....
"She has done us many an ill turn gratuitously and not a single good turn

that was not dictated by selfishpolicy or jealousy of others. She has
shown herself, up till yesterday at least, grasping and unscrupulous. She

is no worse than the others probably--possibly even better--but it would
be doing our country an ill turn to persuade its citizens that England