AMERICA DISCOVERS ENGLAND.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 September 1919, Page 3

AMERICA DISCOVERS ENGLAND.

(The Christian Science Monitor)

On three war journeys I have seen Americans at the front, side bv side with their British brothers-in-the-'blood: and now I hear from the boVs as l.hev disembark from tlie troop ships what they thought of men and things beyond tlie seas.

Die first feeling of men who came in contact with English hospitality is that of unbounded gratitude for the warmth and the sincerity of the welcome. Tliev I found the English always ready to tell J them that England is the common liori- ; a S e of Americans and Englishmen, and to prove it by opening their houses and their hearts to the sojourners Thov came back feeling that American schoolbooks have conveyed a serious- misapprehension as to the meaning of the American Revolution. Once'thev thought there was a great gulf fixed between the Motherland and her ancient colonies bv the deliberate will of Britain. TheV now find that the breach was due to the .obstinacy of a Prussian-blooded, iJrus- . siun-mmded sovereign who was misrepresentative of his people. ' Under George V; England has regained all, and more than all, of the a (lection lijafc was lost to her under Ueorge 111. Ie personal popularity of the present sovereign among Americans is an outBd "'SHis unfailing tact and ins aitability have endeared him 1 o everv doughboy who eame anywhere near him and those who were not so fortunate as to come within hailing distance have accepted the facsimile letters of greeting from the King as though they were personal messages. A death blow has been dealt to jfhe notion that Britain under n constitutional monarchy is undemocratic. Even in those youths of the States who were apparently stolid end unimpressionable there has been bred a profound respect for the deliberate processes of English architecture which »>uilt, not for a day, but for aye. They' have seen that when British engineers put down steel rails, they put them down, not to spread or to crack, but to be perdurable upon solid sleepers and a sound embankment. They have found the magnificent British roads a rebuke to many of the thoroughfares in the sparsely settled communities of the Lnited States. Moreover, they have in English towns and villages a passionate love of beauty that madfe trees and turf and flowers *not an artificial enjoyment, but an incessant wellspring of delight day by day. They have learned that'the British temperament, if not effusive and explosive, deep reserves of feeling which mean thatja friend once made is a friend for always. One of the fcxnefi. cent by-products out of all the hideous wrack and ruin made by war, is the interpretation of each country to the other by the men who clasped hands in a solemn compact to meet their common intolerable foe, and who will never dissolve the bond of amity.