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A Straight Deal-Part10_Owen Wister(1860-1938)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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known what we had felt when Gladstone spoke at Newcastle and when England

let the Alabama loose upon us in 1862. Where was the good in replying at



all? Silence is almost always the best reply in these cases. Next came a

letter from another English stranger, in which the writer announced



having just read The Pentecost of Calamity. Not a word of friendliness

for what I had said about the righteousness of England's cause or my



expressed unhappiness over the course which our Government had taken--

nothing but scorn for us all and the hope that we should reap our deserts



when Germany defeated England and invaded us. Well? What of it? Here was

a stricken person, writing in stress, in a land of desolation, mourning



for the dead already, waiting for the next who should die, a poor,

unstrung average person, who had not long before read that remark of our



President's made on the morrow of the Lusitania: that there is such a

thing as being too proud to fight; had read during the ensuing weeks



those notes wherein we stood committed by our Chief Magistrate to a

verbal slinking away and sitting down under it. Can you wonder? If the



mere memory of those days of our humiliation stabs me even now, I need no

one to tell me (though I have been told) what England, what France, felt



about us then, what it must have been like for Americans who were in

England and France at that time. No: the average person in great trouble



cannot rise above the trouble and survey the truth and be just. In

English eyes our Government--and therefore all of us--failed in 1914--



1915--1916--failed again and again--insulted the cause of humanity when

we said through our President in 1916, the third summer of the war, that



we were not concerned with either the causes or the aims of that

conflict. How could they remember Hoover, or Robert Bacon, or Leonard



Wood, or Theodore Roosevelt then, any more than we could remember John

Bright, or Richard Cobden, or the Manchester men in the days when the



Alabama was sinking the merchant vessels of the Union?

We remembered Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston in the British



Government, and their fellow aristocrats in British society; we

remembered the aristocratic British press--The Times notably, because the



most powerful--these are what we saw, felt, and remembered, because they

were not with us, and were able to hurt us in the days when our friends



were not yet able to help us. They made welcome the Southerners who came

over in the interests of the South, they listened to the Southern



propaganda. Why? Because the South was the American version of their

aristocratic creed. To those who came over in the interests of the North



and of the Union they turned a cold shoulder, because they represented

Democracy; moreover, a Dis-United States would prove in commerce a less



formidable competitor. To Captain Bullock, the able and energetic

Southerner who put through in England the building and launching of those



Confederate cruisers which sank our ships and destroyed our merchant

marine, and to Mason and Slidell, the doors of dukes opened pleasantly;



Beecher and our other emissaries mostly had to dine beneath uncoroneted

roofs.



In the pages of Henry Adams, and of Charles Francis Adams his brother,

you can read of what they, as young men, encountered in London, and what



they saw their father have to put up with there, both from English

society and the English Government. Their father was our new minister to



England, appointed by Lincoln. He arrived just after our Civil War had

begun. I have heard his sons talk about it familiarly, and it is all to



be found in their writings.

Nobody knows how to be disagreeable quite so well as the English



gentleman, except the English lady. They can do it with the nicety of a

medicine dropper. They can administer the precise quantum suff. in every



case. In the society of English gentlemen and ladies Mr. Adams by his

official position was obliged to move. They left him out as much as they



could, but, being the American Minister, he couldn't be left out

altogether. At their dinners and functions he had to hear open



expressions of joy at the news of Southern victories, he had to receive

slights both veiled and unveiled, and all this he had to bear with



equanimity. Sometimes he did leave the room; but with dignity and

discretion. A false step, a "break," might have led to a request for



his recall. He knew that his constant presence, close to the English




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