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The Message, a novel by Alec John Dawson |
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Part 2. The Awakening - Chapter 16. Hands Across The Sea |
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_ PART II. THE AWAKENING CHAPTER XVI. HANDS ACROSS THE SEA
I was impatient to reach London, but I should have been far more impatient if I had known that Constance Grey stood waiting to meet me on the arrival platform at Waterloo. "They told me your train at the office," she said, as I took one of her hands in both of mine, "and I could not resist coming to give you the news. Don't say you have had it!" "No," I told her. "My best news is that Constance has come to meet me, and that I am alive to appreciate the fact very keenly. Another trifling item is that, so far as I can tell, practically every member of The Citizens would respond to-morrow to a call for active service in Timbuctoo--if the call came. I tell you, Constance, this is not reform, it's revolution that has swept over England. We call our membership three and a half millions; it's fifty millions, really. They're all Citizens, every mother's son of them; and every daughter, too." We were in a cab now. "But what about my news?" said Constance. "Yes, tell me, do. And isn't it magnificent about the Navy? How about those 'Terrible' fellows? Constance, do you realize how all this must strike a man who was scribbling and fiddling about disarmament a year ago? And do you realize who gave that man decent sanity?" "Hush! It wasn't a person, it was a force; it was the revolution that brought the change." "Ah, well, God bless you, Constance! I wish you'd give me the news." "I will, directly you give me a chance to get in a word. Well, John is at Westminster, in consultation with the Foreign Office people, and nothing definite has been done yet; but the great point is, to my thinking, that the offer should ever have been made." "Why, Constance, whatever has bewitched you? I never knew you to begin at the end of a thing before." And indeed it was unlike Constance Grey. She was in high spirits, and somehow this little touch of illogical weakness in her struck me as being very charming. She laughed, and said it was due to my persistent interruptions. And then she gave me the news. "America has offered to join hands with us." "Never!" "Yes. The most generous sort of defensive alliance, practically without conditions, and--'as long as Great Britain's present need endures.' Isn't it splendid? John Crondall regards it as the biggest thing that has happened; but he is all against accepting the offer." There had been vague rumours at the time of the invasion, and again, of a more pointed sort, when Britain declared war. But every one had said that the pro-German party and the ultra-American party were far too strong in the United States to permit of anything beyond expressions of good-will. But now, as I gathered from the copy of the Evening Standard which Constance gave me: "The heart of the American people has been deeply stirred by two considerations: Germany's unwarrantable insolence and arrogance, and Britain's magnificent display of patriotism, ashore and afloat, in fighting for her independence. The patriotic struggle for independence--that is what has moved the American people to forgetfulness of all jealousies and rivalries. The rather indiscreet efforts of the German sections of the American public have undoubtedly hastened this offer, and made it more generous and unqualified. The suggestion that any foreign people could hector them out of generosity to the nation from whose loins they sprang, finally decided the American public; and it is fair to say that the President's offer of alliance is an offer from the American people to the British people." "But how about the Monroe Doctrine?" I said to Constance, after running through the two-column telegram from Washington, of which this passage formed part. "I don't know about that; but you see, Dick, this thing clearly comes from the American people, not her politicians and diplomatists only. That is what gives it its tremendous importance, I think." "Yes; to be sure. And why does John Crondall want the offer declined?" "Oh, he hadn't time to explain to me; but he said something about its being necessary for the new Britain to prove herself, first; our own unity and strength. 'We must prove our own Imperial British alliance first,' he said." "I see; yes, I think I see that. But it is great news, as you say--great news." How much John Crondall's view had to do with the Government's decision will never be known, but we know that England's deeply grateful Message pointed out that, in the opinion of his Majesty's Imperial Government, the most desirable basis for an alliance between two great nations was one of equality and mutual respect. While in the present case there could be nothing lacking in the affection and esteem in which Great Britain held the United States, yet the equality could hardly be held proven while the former Power was still at war with a nation which had invaded its territory. The Message expressed very feelingly the deep sense of grateful appreciation which animated his Majesty's Imperial Government and the British people, which would render unforgettable in this country the generous magnanimity of the American nation. And, finally, the Message expressed the hope, which was certainly felt by the entire public, that those happier circumstances which should equalize the footing of the two nations in the matter of an alliance would speedily come about. To my thinking, our official records contain no document more moving or more worthy of a great nation than that Message, which, as has so frequently been pointed out, was in actual truth a Message from the people of one nation to the people of another nation--from the heart of one country to the heart of another country. The Message of thanks, no less than the generous offer itself, was an assertion of blood-kinship, an appeal to first principles, a revelation of the underlying racial and traditional tie which binds two great peoples together through and beneath the whole stiff robe of artificial differences which separated them upon the surface and in the world's eyes. The offer stands for all time a monument to the frank generosity and humanity of the American people. And in the hearts of both peoples there is, in my belief, another monument to certain sturdy qualities which have gone to the making and cementing of the British Empire. The shape that monument takes is remembrance of the Message in which that kindly offer was for the time declined. The declining of the American offer has been called the expression of a nation's pride. It was that, incidentally. First and foremost--and this, I think, is the point which should never be forgotten--it was the expression of a nation's true humility. Pride we had always with us in England, of the right sort and the wrong sort; of the sort that adds to a people's stature, and sometimes, of late, of the gross and senseless sort that leads a people into decadence. But in the past year we had learned to know and cherish that true pride which has its foundations in the rock of Duty, and is buttressed all about and crowned by that quality which St. Peter said earned the grace of God--humility. For my part, I see in that Message the ripe fruit of the Canadian preachers' teaching; the crux and essence of the simple faith which came to be called "British Christianity." I think the spirit of it was the spirit of the general revival in England that came to us with the Canadian preachers; even as so much other help, spiritual and material, came to us from our kinsmen of the greater Britain overseas, which, before that time, we had never truly recognized as actually part, and by far the greater part, of our State. _ |
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