The Friendship Indispensable

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THE FRIENDSHIP
INDISPENSABLE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS
ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

T HE: KR I JEM P g H I P

I N E> J:PEN S'ABIL E

BY

CHARLES EDWARD JEFFERSON

AUTHOR OF "THE BUILDING OF THE CHURCH," ETC.

got*
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1923

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and printed. Published April, 1923.

* J J
Press of

J. J. Little & Ives Co'mpany
New York, XT. S. A.

6 f92|

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE NEED OF INTERPRETATION .... i

II. BRITAIN FOUR YEARS AFTER THE WAR . . 9

III. THINGS BEAUTIFUL IN BRITAIN . . , . 17

IV. BRITAIN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD Us, .... 24
V. THE CITY TEMPLE 32

VI. RELIGIOUS LIFE IN BRITAIN 39

VII. POLITICAL LIFE IN BRITAIN 46

VIII. MR. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 53

IX. ANGLO-AMERICAN FRIENDSHIP .... 60

X, FOES OF INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP . . 67

XL PROHIBITION AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 74

XII. THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH .... 82

THE FRIENDSHIP
INDISPENSABLE

THE
FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

CHAPTER I
THE NEED OF INTERPRETATION

Do two English-speaking nations' need to be in
terpreted to one another? They do, even if they
exist side by side on the same continent. Much
greater is the need if a mighty ocean rolls between
them. There are times when distance does not lend
enchantment to the view. When one nation looks
at another nation through the mists of three thou
sand miles of sea, it sometimes sees specters, and
other things uncanny. British ignorance of the
United States has been recently commented on by
Sir Auckland Geddes and other British public men,
and the ignorance of Britain which prevails in the
United States is also colossal and much to ^ be
lamented. Britain does not understand America,
nor does America understand Britain. I use Amer
ica as a synonym of the United States. When citi
zens of the United States call themselves Americans,
it is not because they assume^ that they are the only
people on the American continent. They call them
selves Americans to differentiate themselves from
the Canadians on the north and the Mexicans on
the south. We seem to be driven to this form of

2 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

speech in order to escape the uncouth expression
"United" Statesians:" That would be intolerable,
and so, not prompted by bumptiousness but driven
by necessity, much of the world has come to speak
of the United States in ordinary conversation as
"America," and of the citizens of that country as
"Americans." In that popular sense I use the word
"America" in these articles. First of all let us deal
with British ignorance of America.

Britons on the whole are ignorant of America
because most of them have never seen America.
Britons do a lot of sight-seeing in their own little
island. Many of them go now and then to the
continent, but only a few ever cross the Atlantic,
and of these few only a fraction visit the United
States. It is one of the surprises to an American
traveling in England to find intelligent people there
who have been several times in Canada but never in
the United States. The greatest of the world's
republics did not excite their curiosity sufficiently to
induce them to cross the border.

The fact is that the average Englishman is not
greatly interested in our country. This is true of
all classes. Educated Englishmen do not follow
our political and social and religious movements
with the same interest with which educated Ameri
cans follow theirs. An Englishman of culture is far
more likely to be ignorant of current events in
America than a cultivated American of current
events in Great Britain. I once asked an English
man to account for this. He admitted that it is a
fact, and his explanation was that England is an old
country, and America is comparatively a new coun
try, and that it is natural for the new countries to
look to the old. The children follow with keener
curiosity the conduct of the mother than the mother

THE NEED OF INTERPRETATION 3

follows the actions of the children. Many English
men in high circles do not think there is anything
worth seeing in the United States. Now no one can
understand a country he has never seen. Every
traveler knows that nothing can take the place of
the eye in making the acquaintance of a people.
Books do not carry one far. The imagination is
one of the most unreliable of all our faculties. The
most diligent student is always amazed on arriving
on a foreign shore to find everything so different
from what he had anticipated. ^Much of the igno
rance on both sides of the Atlantic is due to the fact
that the masses of both countries have never left
their own shores.

A second cause of misunderstanding is the daily
press. The daily press does not intentionally mis
represent one country to another. An occasional
journalist, devoid of conscience and driven on by the
fury of a jingoistic heart, may deliberately carica
ture and render odious by misrepresentation one
nation to another, but the mischief done by the^daily
press is not the product of malice but the inevitable
outcome of the conditions and limitations within
which the press must do its work. The American
press gives scant space to British news for the
reason that America is a vast world in itself, and
supplies more good copy every day than can pos
sibly be used. The British press gives even less
space to American news, and there is a reason.
London is the metropolis of the world and the
center of it, and enough important things occur in
that one city every twenty-four hours to keep the
printing presses working overtime. There are
other great British cities and these cannot be over
looked. And beyond England there are British
colonies and dependencies every one of which has

4 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

a claim on the attention of a Briton who wishes to
play an intelligent part in the life of his generation.
In the British press American news is sometimes
only Canadian news. It is not uncommon to find
United States news condensed into a paragraph. A
man comes to grade the importance of nations by
the amount of space they fill in his daily paper.
How can the masses of people come to know a
nation which is habitually shoved into an obscure
corner of their public prints? This is said not in
way of condemnation, but for purposes of explana
tion.

The bulk of American news appearing in British
papers may be divided into two classes. First is
the financial news, the quotations of the stock mar
ket, the operations in Wall Street. American news
is often the story of big deals. The almighty dollar
and America are constantly linked together in Brit
ish papers. No wonder that it is current opinion
that Americans care only for money and that this
country is the Paradise of promoters and explorers,
a land of speculators and frenzied financiers. Tbe
dollar mark is thrust every day into the British eye.
Of course space is left for a recital of the unsavory
and the horrible. It is a newspaper tradition that
only what is exceptional is really news. The press
cannot afford to print the ordinary, the habitual, the
normal. It is frightful accidents, and appalling mis
fortunes, and atrocious crimes, and freakiness raised
to a lofty pitch which the cable loves. But these
are not the things which reveal the character of a
people. Character comes out in the ordinary rou
tine of the common days, in the habitual conduct of
the plain people. The newspaper must be made
interesting, and to be interesting it must deal with
the spectacular and the abnormal. Thus the

THE NEED OF INTERPRETATION 5

America which a Briton sees is a caricature. No
such America really exists. The papers repeat facts,
but isolated facts cannot tell the truth. Life is
made up of the ordinary. Character is revealed
by the habitual. A nation's soul is expressed not in
the antics of eccentric individuals, but in the com
monplace ongoings of the prosaic days. The daily
press is constantly leading the world astray by its
inability to report all the facts.

False impressions are created in other ways.
The tourist frequently misrepresents his country in
foreign lands. Americans sweep over the British
isles every summer like a tidal wave. It is a good
thing for Americans to visit Britain good for
Americans and good for Britons too but it is un
fortunate that not a few American tourists fail to
represent their country worthily. Multitudes of
our best people never go abroad. Some of our least
worthy people go every summer. It is natural that
rich people should travel, but only rich Americans
travel with from ten to fourteen trunks apiece. The
newly rich always occupy a prominent place in the
tourist procession and it is a matter of regret that
the newly rich do not always possess good manners.
Every well behaved American who has traveled
abroad has frequently blushed for shame because of
the conduct of some of his ill behaved fellow trav
elers. Travel has a tendency to bring out what is
worst in a person. People often do when abroad
what they will not do at home. Persons genteel
and gracious aijiong friends sometimes become over
bearing and boorish among strangers. Even sen
sible people often become crotchety, and unbearable
when subjected for a long time to the irritations
and vexations of travel. The misconduct of Ameri
can tourists is a topic of conversation in many lands.

6 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

All over Britain one hears stories of the oddities or
grumblings or boastings of some American who has
passed that way. The boisterous laughter, the
reckless squandering of money, the rushing into
places where entrance is forbidden, the destruction
of property in a wild scramble for souvenirs these
are sins not confined exclusively to Americans, but
Americans are often guilty of them, and as Ameri
cans travel in battalions, their approach is often
anticipated with dread. There are Britons who
because of unfortunate experiences have come to
think of America as a nation of braggarts and van
dals and boors. When one thinks of what Britain
has suffered within the present generation from this
annual invasion of American tourists, one wonders
that international relations are as good as they are.
There are American travelers let us rejoice to say
who by their speech and conduct lift America to
higher levels in British esteem, but it is a question
whether American prestige has not on the whole
suffered because of the rudeness and ostentation
and bumptiousness of a certain class of Americans
who every summer rush from city to city u doing
England/'

Another reason why Britons do not understand
us is because we are so big, and so mixed. Indeed
it is hard to understand ourselves. What American
does not stand bewildered in the presence of devel
opments in his own nation's life! England is a
little country, Scotland is yet smaller and Wales is
smaller still. You can put all three of them and
Ireland too inside of any one of several of our com
monwealths. When Miss Maude Royden visited
us last spring, she attended a conference, some of
whose delegates had traveled two days and a half
to be present, and yet the place of meeting was cen-

THE NEED OF INTERPRETATION 7

tral. The British woman went home wondering if
any country has a right to be so big. It is because
of pur enormous size that we cannot do many things
which are easily done in Britain. Our population is
conglomerate. ^ The British people are homogene
ous. London is solidly English, only four per cent
of her population is foreign born. Compare Lon
don with New York. When you are in London you
know where you are. Who can tell when in New
York where he is? It is this mixture of races and
nations under our flag which complicates all our
problems and makes it well-nigh impossible for a
Briton to understand us. Newspapers have a way
of talking which creates endless confusion. They
say, "America thinks" "America is indignant."
"America has changed her mind." "The American
heart has cooled." "America is no longer our
friend," all of which is newspaper lingo, with no
meaning whatever. America is too complex to be
characterized in a sentence. Feeling and thought
in a hundred million people are too diverse to be
defined by a reporter. America is a huge mass of
human beings drawn from the four quarters of the
globe, scattered over more than three million square
miles of territory, and a foreign journalist who tells
his readers what America thinks or feels is likely to
shed darkness rather than light. A little group in
America may by its gesticulations and loud bawling
give the outside world the impression that what it
says is the sentiment of the whole American nation.
Frenzied Irishmen, for instance, in mass meetings in
a few Eastern cities have hissed Britain with such
venom and heated vociferousness that many Britons
have come to feel that the American Irishman is the
accredited spokesman of the American republic. It
is assumed in many circles that when he speaks the

8 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

real soul of America finds expression. Britons are
often misled.

These are a few of the reasons why interpreta
tion is indispensable. We Americans misunderstand
Britain because we too are ignorant. We also need
the assistance of an interpreter. Men of good will
have a work to do. They alone can remove the
misunderstandings and mischievous impressions and
foster the feelings which will create a friendship
which cannot be broken.

CHAPTER II

BRITAIN FOUR YEARS AFTER THE WAR

Outwardly she seems unscratched. I was in Lon
don in 1912, and the London of 1922 seemed no
different. It was the same big, old town. The buses
had not changed, nor the crowds, nor Fleet Street,,
nor Trafalgar Square, nor the Thames. I was dis
appointed. I had expected changes. I supposed I
should see an increased number of maimed and crip
pled men in the streets. They were not there.
Britain had two million men wounded in the war,
and many of them were permanently wounded, but
one does not see them in the city streets. I saw no
more one-armed and one-legged men in London
than I had seen there ten years before.

London is not scarred by the war. The bomb
dropping aeroplanes did their utmost, but it was not
much. The destruction of physical property was
slight. There is an inconspicuous plate here and
there marking the spot where a bomb fell, but a
visitor would not see these plates if they were not
pointed out to him. Germany's damage to London
was a mere pin scratch, and a pin scratch becomes
invisible in less than four years. Nor are there any
scars on physical England anywhere. There are no
ruins in any part of the island to which a tourist is
conducted, no devastated fields, no blasted forests.
The landscape which one sees from the railway
train smiles as of old. England is still as beautiful
as the Garden of Eden.

io THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

Nor could I see any change in the people, either
in their looks or their conduct. Seven hundred
thousand Britons died in the war, but a visitor does
not detect their absence. London is still the largest
city on the planet, and Glasgow and Birmingham,
Edinburgh, and Manchester are still expanding. I
paid particular attention to the dress and the faces
of the people, everywhere they seemed well dressed
and well nourished. There was no sign of poverty
anywhere, except in those quarters where poverty is
perennial. Even in Jarrow, where thousands of
men out of work filled the streets, the children
looked robust and happy, and no suffering met the
eye. In no part of the country did there seem to
be scarcity of money. Railroad rates were high,
but everybody seemed to be traveling. Crowded
trains were common. The trains out of London at
the end of the week were jammed. Outwardly
England is prosperous and happy. The play
grounds were all filled with players. The theaters
were packed to the doors. The music halls were
overflowing. The Derby never drew larger crowds.
Ascot was never more thronged or more magnifi
cent. The shop windows of the cities were full of
everything which the heart can crave or money can
buy, and buyers were abundant.

I was in London in the "Season," and what a
season it was ! The papers agreed that for the first
time since the war, life had mounted to its pre-war
volume and sparkle. English society was extraor
dinarily brilliant in the "Season" of 1922. I had
read in American papers of the poverty in Britain,
but there was no evidence of it which came under
my eye. I was at Ascot on the last day of the races
when royalty was there, and a great company of the
lords and ladies of the land, and the display of

BRITAIN FOUR YEARS AFTER THE WAR n

fashion was indescribably gorgeous and dazzling.
No one was able to compute the total cost of the
hats and garments and jewels worn that day. On
the day preceding the day of my visit to Ascot it
had rained and some of the papers estimated that
$500,000 worth of dresses and hats had been
ruined. There were enough others unspoiled to
make the day of my visit outflash any day I had
ever seen. When one gazed on that vast exhibition
of costly raiment, that phenomenal display of milli
nery glory, it was difficult to believe that the bloodi
est and costliest of all wars had ended less than
four years before. I was in Oxford on the last
day of the boat races there. The Isis was covered
with boats filled with the beauty and strength of
England. It seemed as though all the prettiest
girls of the British Empire had assembled that day
in Oxford, and that the handsomest young men of
Britain were there to greet them. On the faces of
that joyous crowd, war did not cast a shadow.
Many men had perished in the awful struggle, but
multitudes are still alive, strong and eager to carry
forward the old Oxford traditions. Many women
had been crushed by the weight of sorrow rolled
upon them by the war, but Britain has today thou
sands of lovely girls, strong in body and radiant in
spirit, who will become the mothers of men as fine
and strong as those who perished in the war.

It is amazing how quickly the ravages of war are
covered up. Nature does not like a scar. With in
imitable artistry she conceals it . On even the worst
shell-swept battlefields of France, I saw poppies
blooming. Along the trenches, grew rows of col
ored blossoms, and at the bottom of many a shell
hole I saw a flower. Nature tries to forget the
insane things which her children do. She blots out

12 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

as rapidly as possible the products of their folly.
In a few short years physical Europe will show
scarcely a trace of the havoc and devastation
wrought by the most furious of all the human tem
pests which have ever swept across the earth.

Human nature is equally industrious in covering
over .the wounds which war has made. The human
heart is so buoyant that no tragedy can quench the
fire which burns in it. The human spirit is so tough-
fibered that no tribulation can break it. No matter
how appalling the catastrophe, laughter never dies
out of the mouth, and the heart never permanently
loses its song. In spite of the great war there is
still a "Merry England."

I loved to watch the English children play. It is
through the children that God assists the world to
get rid of its torturing memories, and by their
smiles and laughter he wipes the tears from the
world's eyes. All children under three are just as
happy today as though the war had never been.
No child of five knows the fear and agony of war.
Here then is a fountain of life undarkened by the
shadows of bereavement. Upon the heart of a
little child no shadow ever falls. The children of
Britain up to eight years of age have never carried
the burden which their parents carried, and because
their hearts are fresh they will be strong to do effec
tive work in the building of the world which is to
be. Their hearts have not been bruised or broken
by the hurricane which shook the world, and it 4s
their sunny minds and leaping spirits which will be
potent in shaping the policy of the coming years.

But there is an interior life of a nation, and the
interior life of Britain has been variously altered.
Four years can wipe the tears from the eyes, but
four years cannot wipe the tears from the heart

BRITAIN FOUR YEARS AFTER THE WAR 13

Britain's heart is full of tears. There are no audible
sobs, but in silence Britain is weeping. Underneath
all the gaiety and mirth which float on the surface,
there is an immeasurable grief in the soul of the
British people. The tourist can pass swiftly from
city to city visiting art galleries, and enjoying cathe
drals, and remain unconscious of what the people
are thinking and feeling. Outside the hedge the sun
is shining inside the hedge the shadows are deep
and long. It was my privilege to have access to
many British homes. In every home I found myself
in the presence of a grave. It was a son or a
brother, or a father, or a neighbor's boy, a nephew
or a grandson or a daughter's husband. Always
was there a vacant chair, in that home, or in some
other home connected with it. If I did not hear the
story of death, it was a tragic tale of ruined health,
a shattered constitution, the upsetting of life's plans,
the fading of dreams, the blasting of glowing hopes.
Britain four years after the war is still bleeding.

I noted quite early a difference in the English
papers. They give more space now to crime than
they did ten years ago. I presume this is because
there is more crime to report. More prominence is
given to divorce trials than before the war, and the
reason is that the war increased the number of mar
ried couples who wish no longer to live together.
Britain like our own country is suffering from a
crime wave and a divorce wave. War is the arch
demoralizer of society. War is the deadliest enemy
of mankind. War always upsets, mars, destroys.
War brings down the ethical standards. War de
moralizes the moral values. War pulls down and
tramples all the virtues. Britain was stabbed by the
jvar and she is bleeding.

Britain has a colossal national debt. Her taxa-

14 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

tion is appalling. Her debt aggregates over forty
billion dollars. The average Britain pays one-third
of his income in taxes. On a little Ford car he pays
ninety dollars a year. When an automobile in
Britain goes up even a slight hill it always goes on
second speed because its horse power is low. The
horse power is kept low in order to escape a tax bill
too heavy to pay. London surprises the American
visitor by the number of horses to be seen in her
streets. There are many motor buses, but the pri
vate automobiles are comparatively few. When
one hears what a Briton is charged a gallon for
gasoline and what he pays in taxes on his car, one
wonders that a Briton is willing to own an -automo
bile at all. New York is a city of automobiles so
also is Paris. London is a city of horses. Britain
in order to pay her debt is willing to subject herself
to a taxation which no other people would endure.

Outwardly Britain looks prosperous and money
seems abundant, but when one gets under the sur
face he finds embarrassments, and economies, and
oftentimes privations, which are painful and in
some cases heart breaking. Thousands of Britons
cannot live as they lived before the war. They say
nothing. They suffer in silence. Many Britons are
out of work. In some cities the number reached
into the tens of thousands. One day I observed
near my hotel a great crowd of men extending
almost a block. I supposed it was a temporary con
gestion, and paid no attention to them. At the end
of an hour I passed that way, again, they were still
there. At the end of three hours they were there
still. My curiosity was aroused, and on investiga
tion I found that these men were all looking for a
job. It had been made public that morning that a
humble workman in a hotel had the day before

BRITAIN FOUR YEARS AFTER THE WAR 15

given up his position, and the announcement of this
fact was sufficient to draw together this immense
host of applicants eager to fill his place. One was
chosen, ninety-nine went home disappointed.

The problem of unemployment is only one of a
dozen or more puzzling questions with which the
British people have to grapple. The Irish problem
is not yet^ settled, nor is the Egyptian problem, nor
is the Indian problem, nor is the Palestine .problem,
nor is the problem of dealing with the Turk. World
politics so frenzied and tangled that the wisest
man cannot tell what a day may bring forth. I was
impressed by the humility of the men I had the
privilege of meeting. None of them claimed either
special knowledge or wisdom. They all were ready
to say, "I do not know," or "It is hard to say," or,
"Nobody can tell." To most inquiries in regard to
what the outcome was likely to be, the answer was :
"I don't know." We are all walking like men in a
mist. The fog which has settled down upon the
common people has wrapped itself around the heads
of the high and the great. '-The world has become
so complicated, and the threads of its life have
become so tangled, that its problems run beyond the
powers of the human mind. There are thunder
clouds all around the horizon, and who dare predict
what is going to happen? All nations are like ships
tossed on an angry sea, and the war has engulfed
the whole world in a dense fog. Some nations are
in terror, suffering from shell shock. Others are
bewildered and semi-paralyzed. Still others are at
the point of delirium. The war was a world shat
tering catastrophe. It was a cosmic tragedy. The
convulsion reached down to the roots of our civ
ilization. Humanity is desperately sick. It has a
high fever, a rapid pulse, and is on the verge of ner-

16 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

vous collapse. It will not recover in a generation,
For a hundred years mankind will limp because of
the great war. But of all the peoples of the old
world who had a prominent part in this bloody
drama, the British have best kept their head. The
British temper has most successfully stood the test.
The British character has won new luster in the
world-darkness.

CHAPTER III
THINGS BEAUTIFUL IN BRITAIN

I do not write of her physical charms. I am not
thinking now of her lawns and her trees, her birds
and her flowers, her art galleries and her cathedrals.
These have been written about thousands of times.
The world is filled with pictures of them. I con
fine myself to some spiritual lovelinesses of Britain.

The apostle Paul has urged us to meditate upon
the things which are lovely and of good report. If
there be any virtue or any praise we are to think
about them, if there be any form of strength, or
any form of beauty, we are to let our mind rest
upon them. It is a misfortune that we often think
of the worst happening in foreign lands. If there
be any weakness or anything deserving of condem
nation the cable sends it on. All the worst things
of America are known and talked about in Britain.
The British people know all about our divorces,
our murders, our lynchings and our rascalities. It
is a sad story which British papers receive from
America to lay before their readers. What a pity
the cable cannot be trained to carry in both direc
tions news of things which are lovely and of good
report I

A visitor in England cannot fail to be impressed
by the courtesy of public officials. When I showed
my passport to the officer on board the steamer
before landing, I told him I was going to preach
three months in Britain. His affable reply was:

17

i8 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

"Report at once to the Chief of Police when you
reach London." It was said in a tone so gentle and
friendly that I felt sure it was a proper thing for
me to do. The London policeman is a model of
politeness. He has been praised many times, and
I want to praise him again. He is pestered half to
death all day long by American tourists who are
always wanting him to tell them which bus to take,
or in what direction to go, or how far off a certain
place is, and he never loses his patience, and while
not omniscient his knowledge is immense. I was
surprised to learn the London policeman does not
carry a revolver. There are twenty-five thousand
policemen in Greater London, and not one of them
is armed. When Sir Henry Wilson was murdered
on the steps of his home, the murderers were at
once confronted by policemen. The murderers held
pistols and the policemen had none, but those un
armed policemen compelled the murderers to retreat
down the street. The murderers fired at them
again and again. Three policemen were wounded
before the murderers were disarmed. It is a thrill
ing fact that the greatest city on the earth is held
in order by a body of men who carry nothing in
their hands.

The English have a beautiful fondness for things
which are old. Yesterday is held^ in reverence.
The past is considered sacred, and is carried for
ward into the new generation. It is fascinating to
an American to read the names of the streets dis
played on the London buses. They are so quaint
and so funny. Many of them sound as though they
might have been invented by Charles Dickens,
Others go back to the age of Elizabeth, while still
others seem to run back to the beginning of the
world.

THINGS BEAUTIFUL IN BRITAIN 19

The British are always celebrating birthdays of
great men and women. Every member of the,
Royal Family has a birthday every year, and not
one of these can be neglected. The illustrious dead
are not allowed to slip out of the mind. One morn
ing I awoke to find the city celebrating Queen Vic
toria's birthday. I do not think they celebrate the
birthday of George III. Britain has a long line of
departed generals and admirals, statesmen and
poets, and these must all be remembered every year.
The nation stands face to face continuously with its
mighty dead. Blessed are the people who reverence
the great and the good of the generations that are
gone. Britain is immovable because of her tight
grip on the past.

An American in London is impressed by the gen
tleness of the people, especially when they are
massed together in crowds. A London crowd is the
gentlest of all crowds. I saw several immense ones,
but I never heard any loud talking or explosive
laughter, and I never saw any shoving or pushing.
There were no rowdies or boors, just a mass of
people quiet and well bred.

The British believe in work and they also believe
in play. They do a lot of work. They do their
work easily and without fuss. They open their
stores at nine and close them early. The men
demand opportunity to play, and so also do the
women. Playgrounds are everywhere, and they are
always full. The children play and the youth play,
and the men play even up to old age. In our coun
try tennis is considered too swift a game for men
over forty, but in England men in the seventies still
play tennis. Earl Balfour is seventy-four, but at a
garden party last June he delighted a large com
pany by playing a set of tennis with Mr. Bonar Law.

20 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

All classes and ages play. No matter how busy a
man is he still plays. Mr. Lloyd George has borne
heavier burdens during the last eight years than
any other man on the planet. His physical stamina
is amazing. Every one who sees him is struck by
his freshness and Uuoyancy. He never is too busy
to play. In the greatest crisis he takes time to play
golf. ^

Britons also take time to drink tea about four
o'clock. They do this every day. They do it all
over England. It is a national institution. An
American soon comes to believe in it and to like it.
It breaks the monotony of the working day. It
throws around life an air of leisureliness. It re
minds one that we are here not simply to work but
to live. It gives friends an opportunity of meeting.
Social life is quickened and nourished. Huma^i
hearts are brought closer together. Over the tea
cups political and church questions can be amicably
discussed. Viewpoints can be compared and minds
can be clarified. Britons do not gulp down their
tea in a hurry. They sip it leisurely. They drink
two cups and sometimes more. They tarry after
the last drop has disappeared. There is no more
hard work that day. One wonders what effect on
the British character would be wrought by the
elimination of the afternoon teapot. I found on
the continent one day an Englishman who was in
the worst of humors. On investigation I discov
ered he was out of sorts because he was being
deprived of his afternoon tea. One reason why
England is so rich in expert conversationists is no
doubt the opportunity given for social intercourse
over the teacups.

The devotion of Britons to their royal family
must be put down in the list of things lovely.

THINGS BEAUTIFUL IN BRITAIN 21

George V is popular with his people. He is not
brilliant but he is sensible. He is not a genius, but
he is a reliable high-minded man. The Queen
shares her husband's popularity. The papers fondly
record day by day her every movement, and never
fail to tell what kind of a dress she had on, and
what style of a hat she wore. Princess Mary is a
great favorite. When her wedding presents were
displayed they attracted vast crowds of men and
women of all classes. Waitresses and shop girls
and domestic servants and scrub women were found
daily in the line. They felt that Princess Mary
belonged to them, and they took a genuine pride in
her marriage and in her presents. London is in
some ways only a big village, and has not thrown off
entirely rural ways. When a girl in a small town
marries, all the neighbors take an intense interest in
her husband, in her trousseau, and in her presents.
For several weeks she is the uppermost topic in con
versation. They are fond of her because she is
one of themselves. So it was in the big town of
London when Princess Mary was married. The
neighbors through six weeks kept coming in to see
the beautiful things she had received.

But the most popular member of the royal
family is the Prince of Wales. His popularity
almost reaches the point of adoration. The enthu
siasm is universal. Undoubtedly he is today the
most popular young man in the world. When Mr.
Lloyd George said the other day in his speech at
the Guild Hall in London that "while there may be
differences between parties and differences in parties,
upon one thing there is no division and no difference
of opinion, and that is our admiration, our attach
ment, and our affection for the Prince of Wales,"
his words were received with a storm of applause.

22 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

Everybody in England seems not only to admire
him, but to be fond of him. I found the people in
Scotland as enthusiastic as the people in England.
"He always does the right thing, he always speaks
the right word," so exclaimed a jubilant Scotchman
to me one Sunday in St. Giles' Cathedral. Eulogy
higher than this it would be impossible to pro
nounce. That seems to be the deliberate judgment
of the British people on the Prince of Wales. They
have watched over him since he was a baby. They
have followed him through all the stages of his
education. When he went last spring to the Far
East they followed him with their thoughts, and
when he returned the whole nation gave a great
glad shout of welcome. The London papers in
long editorials dwelt upon his tour as though it
were one of the great events of modern history,
and poured praises upon him such as have been
bestowed upon few mortals. The Prince brought
home with him a large collection of birds and mon
keys and snakes presented to him by various rulers
in India and Ceylon, and for these specimens a
special place was made in the Zoological Garden in
Regent's Park. A rush was made at once to see
them, and for weeks great crowds gazed with de
light on these possessions of the Prince. His tour
to the Far East was noteworthy because it was a
part of his preparation to perform some day the
duties of the ruler of the British Empire. Britons
follow him with loving solicitude because he belongs
to them and will some day be their king. Kingship
after the British fashion has many admirable
features, and serves various desirable ends. The
King is not a despot. His authority is narrowly
limited. Britain is a genuine democracy. The Peo
ple rule. They rule through the House of Com-

THINGS BEAUTIFUL IN BRITAIN 23

mons, and the head of the government is the Prime
Minister. The Government can be overthrown any
day by vote of the House of Commons. An appeal
must then be made to the voters who must decide
whether the present policies shall be continued. All
this takes place entirely independently of the King.
The King sits in a realm above partisan politics.
He is the symbol of national unity. He is the head
of the British people. He is the personification of
the dignity and might of the empire. To him the
hearts of the people turn. In him they find unity
and strength. At the end of every play in every
theater the orchestra plays a line of "God save our
gracious King." Before smoking is allowed at any
public banquet or dinner, the guests drink the health
of the King. Often the whole company rises and
sings. There is nothing which Britons sing with
such gusto and glow as this :

God save our gracious King
Long live our noble King
God save our King.
Send him victorious
Happy and glorious
Long to reign over us
God save the King.

CHAPTER IV

BRITAIN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD US

An American living in Britain for several months
and mingling freely with the better classes, comes
to feel that the British people on the whole are
kindly disposed toward us. Their feelings are
friendly. They are our friends not only today, but
they want to be our friends tomorrow and the day
after. It is not possible to speak for every individ
ual of an entire nation. There are individuals in
every country who do not reflect the common senti
ment. There are groups in every land whose spirit
is not that of the people as a whole. Just as there
are groups of persons in America who are always
suspicious of Britain and readily express their dis
like, so also in Britain there are groups who have no
fondness for America and who regard us some
times with scorn and sometimes with mingled pity
and horror. But the British are a remarkably homo
geneous people. There is a public opinion there
which is calculable beyond public opinion in the
United States. It is easier to say what is the Brit
ish attitude to any question or country, than to say
what is the attitude of the United States. Britain
is a small country and her population is not drawn
as ours is from a dozen different nations. It is the
conviction of all the Britons with whom I talked
that the British people is our steadfast friend, and
that judgment was confirmed in my own mind by
my varied experiences and observations.

24

BRITAIN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD US 25

^^any Britons ^ have their doubts as to the
friendliness of America toward them. They feel
that we are indifferent, if not positively hostile.
They can marshal quite a mass of evidence to sup
port this feeling, and the surmise that we do not
like them gives them not a little concern. They are
perplexed by many phenomena which they find it
hard to interpret. We are always doing something
or saying something which increases their bewilder
ment. The course of our present government is
something of an enigma. Our aloofness is hard for
them to excuse. They feel that we by our action
have made the European situation more bafflng and
dangerous. They have not entirely forgotten the
service we rendered in the war, but I could not help
feeling that the edge of their gratitude has been con
siderably dulled. There are individuals in whose
hearts the sense of appreciation is still keen, but the
average Briton is not dwelling so much now on
what we did to win the war as on the amount of
money we made out of the war. He hotly resents
the assertion of sundry American papers that
Britain has added immensely to her land possessions
by the war. He claims that Britain wanted to gain
no territory whatever by the war, that Britain had
already more land than she wanted, and that what
ever lands have come o her as the result of the
war, are dnly additional burdens. The jtiew colo
nies in Africa are worthless, and Palestine brings
only embarrassing responsibilities and possible
dangers. The new land was thrust on her, and a
Briton feels that any jibe of ^the sort comes with bad
grace from the country which refused to take any
mandate whatever, washing her hands of all respon
sibility, and leaving a helpless people like the Ar
menians to the mercy of a government which has

26 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

the instincts of the wolf. But if an American thinks
of the new acres now under the Union Jack a
Briton is apt to think of the new gold now in Ameri
can pockets. Our newspaper talk about our twenty-
two thousand war millionaires has been repeated
all over Britain. There is not a family in which it
has not been the subject of prolonged conversation.
The fact that we have four times as much gold as
Britain has, and more than all the nations on the
continent of Europe combined, is not conducive to
quietness of mind in Britain. The whole world is
today deeply conscious of the fact that America is
the only Christian nation which made money out of
the war. I was told so in every country in which I
traveled. I found it in the most unexpected quar-'
ters. I heard it from the lips of men whom I never
suspected of giving thought to international^ finance.
On the Corner Grat I found an Alpine guide who
reminded me that America had made a^ fine thing
out of the war. His business was to guide men to
the top of the Matterhorn. While engaged in this
hazardous occupation he seemed to have leisure to
meditate on the wealth which America had amassed
in the war. The flood of American tourists which
deluged Europe this last summer only deepened^in
the mind of millions the conviction that America
Jby the war had put money into her purse. Did not
these Americans fill all the cabins^ de luxe on ^every
expensive steamer, did they not seize ^all the highest
priced rooms in all the most expensive hotels, did
they not crowd into the uppermost seats at the most
extravagant of all the feasts, did they not buy up
all the diamonds in sight, and where did this money
come from if not from the war? We have flashed
our gold in the eyes of the world, and it has not
added to our popularity. A London preacher after

BRITAIN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD US 27

spending two months in the United States went
home to tell his people this :

"Perhaps the^very first impression that comes
to one on arriving in America is the impression
of her wealth. I used to plead with the Ameri
can people to see to it that they do not lose the
love of other peoples. They do not deserve to
lose the good will of other races, and yet it is a
fact that to a great extent America's prosperity
rests upon the war. Men do not hesitate to say
they say it frequently in conversation that
those years of the world's war were years when
money was easy to make in America. A smitten
world turned to her for stores and munitions of
war: let it be said for her that when she came
into the arena there was no stint concerning
money, but it must be remembered that her
material gain, so far as coin is material gain, was
due very largely to the world's distress. It is no
wonder then if the great Republic of the West
lies for the time being under the shadow of the
resentment of many people."

This is all the more significant because it comes
from a man of unusual fairness of judgment and
friendliness of heart. It reveals what lies deep in
the British mind. Britain thinks often of the gold
we accumulated in the war. That is one reason she
is sensitive over her indebtedness to us, and resents
our pushing her in regard to payments. She bor
rowed from us in order that she might loan to
others who had no other friend to whom to turn.
She has a debt of over forty billion dollars. Her
taxation is heavier than that in any other land.
She expects to pay her debts. She has no desire to

28 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

squirm out of them. I never talked with a^ Briton
who was not emphatic and firm^on that point. ^ It
is not the fashion of Britain to shirk financial obliga
tions. But Britain wants time. She will pay, but
it is not easy for her to pay just now. The burden
upon her people is already as heavy as men ought to
be called on to bear. Some day she will pay the last
cent, but our Government seems inclined^to throw
obstacles in the way. We are making it difficult for
her to pay. She cannot easily pay in gold, and there
are only two other ways in which she can pay. She
can pay in services or in goods. She can carry our
exports and imports in her ships. But by pur ship
ping bill we are going to deprive her of this oppor
tunity. She can pay us in goods, but by our tariff
bill we are making it difficult if not impossible for
her to sell us her goods. To Britons it looks as if
we had no mercy. We are out for money, and
money we are going to get no matter who is crowded
to the wall. This ruthless policy relentlessly pur
sued does not strike the average Briton as the
policy of a friend.

Moreover, our attitude toward the League of Na
tions is an embarrassment and a disappointment.
President Wilson went to Paris representing 'the
American people. Under pressure from him,
France waived her claim to a clear cut Rhine fron
tier, conditionally upon America and Britain guar
anteeing France by pact against future German ag
gression. So the peace treaty was drafted. Then
the United States repudiated her accredited^ agent.
She refused to live up to the agreement arrived at
in Paris, To a Briton this looked like a breach of
faith. Nothing like that can happen in British for
eign policy. The nation abides by the acts of her

BRITAIN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD US 29

representatives. When we refused to sign the
treaty or to enter the League of Nations Britain
was left in the lurch. She could not alone guarantee
France against ' German aggression. She was
obliged to withdraw. This left France in the lurch.
Without guarantees she had to fall back upon her
own army. It had to be kept large. This exposed
her to the charge of militarism. It also imposed on
her an enormous budget. This was the beginning
of the estrangement between Britain and France.
They have been pushed farther and farther apart.
If Britons knew our constitution better than they
do, and if they understood that the Senate has a
constitutional right to cooperate with the President
in the shaping of our foreign policy, they would
probably look upon us with a more lenient eye. But
on the surface, it looks as if a President of the
United States was only a puppet at a world council
in a critical day, and that our country jauntily tossed
into the wastebasket an agreement which had been
solemnly made in our name. And so while we did
heroic service in war, we have been a mischief-maker
in peace. Europe so Britons think is more em
broiled today than it would have been had Mr.
Wilson never crossed the Atlantic.

Our persistent aloofness is also a cause of pain
ful wonder. We are rich and strong, but we do not
lend a hand. We are the mightiest of the mighty,
but we refuse to get under the world's burden. We
send only observers, onlookers, spectators. We do
not send men to engage in hard work. We want
civilization to be preserved, but we leave to other
nations the task of preserving it. We want cruelty
suppressed and humanity advanced, but we refuse to
get under the load. We want the problems of the

30 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

world settled equitably, but we decline to take a
place at the council table of the nations. To a
Briton our conduct is selfish and indefensible.

But in spite of all these provocations the temper
of Britain is remarkably sweet. Many of her lead
ers have been in our country. They know the vast-
ness of it, and also the diversity of our population.
They understand that we cannot do at once what we
are certain to do later. They are patient. They
are willing to wait. They have confidence in the
judgment and ideals of our best people. They feel
sure that at heart we are sound. They therefore
refrain from hasty words. They refuse to pass
bitter judgment. They know from their own experi
ence that in a democracy noble causes often lag, and
that bright ideals are sometimes for a season
obscured.

It is not to be wondered at that Britain is some
what puzzled. Many Americans are puzzled them
selves. They cannot understand why our govern
ment does not state clearly what sort of interna
tional body this nation would be willing to enter/
It is evident that the present League of Nations has
features which render it obnoxious to many of our
wisest men. It is well nigh certain that we shall
never enter the League in its present form, nor does
the world expect us to do so. It is our privilege to
stay out of any organization whose nature would in
our judgment retard us in our development, or han
dicap us in rendering our highest service to man
kind. But since we cannot go into, the League as
constituted at present, it is for us to say what modi
fications should be made, or on what conditions we
should be able to come in. To pursue a policy of
isolation, to sit in a box seat as a spectator, to con
tent ourselves with looking on while other nations

BRITAIN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD US 31

are bearing the burden in the heat of the day is to
multitudes the whole world over not a praiseworthy
attitude for the greatest of the world's republics,
not a role which a mighty Christian nation should
be content to play. But Britain believes in us. She
expects to see us at last by her side.

CHAPTER V
THE CITY TEMPLE

The three London churches best known to Amer
icans are probably St. Paul's Cathedral, the Metro
politan Temple, and the City Temple. The first is
Anglican, the second Baptist, and the third is Con
gregational. The first became popular to our gen
eration through the preaching of Canon Liddon,
the second through the preaching of Charles H.
Spurgeon, and the third through the preaching of
Joseph Parker. The City Temple is an old church,
having been organized in 1640 by Rev. Thomas
Goodwin who became its first pastor. Goodwin
was one of the outstanding theologians and preach
ers of his day, a writer of many books, a chaplain of
Oliver Cromwell and one of his chief advisers. It
was Goodwin who ministered to the Lord Protector
upon his deathbed. But the man who made the City
Temple best known to Americans was Dr. Joseph
Parker, who, after a pastorate of thirty-three
years, died in 1902. Joseph 1 Parker was a genius,
and like many another genius, he had his oddities
and limitations. Although the pastor of a Congre
gational church and working under a policy which
places supreme authority in the members of the
church, he did not like church meetings. They bored
him and he had no use for them. He considered
deacons a needless infliction on a church and he would
have none of them. One of my surprises was to find

32

THE CITY TEMPLE 33

a Congregational church without a deacon. He did
not deem a church treasurer essential to the prog
ress of the kingdom of God, and so at the close of
each Sunday all the money obtained in the collection
was ^ handed over to him, and in return he gave a
receipt. Indeed he was not greatly interested in the
church as an organized body at all. To him the
church is simply the Christian people, the men and
women in whom the spiritual work of Christ is
going forward. He despised all priestly or sacer
dotal claims. He brushed aside all written creeds.
He would subscribe to none himself, nor would he
ask others to subscribe. He made no effort to build
up a large membership. He was indifferent to the
number of church accessions. Stories are afloat
some of them perhaps apocryphal of how persons
had to struggle to get into the church at all, in some
cases being obliged to wait for more than a year
before they could gain admittance. And so when
the fame of the City Temple was filling the earth,
and men far away were thinking of it as one of the
largest churches in the world, it was in fact one of
the smallest of churches, being surpassed in size by
many Churches in country towns. Under Dr. Parker
the City Temple was practically a preaching station.
Men ^and women from the ends of the earth gath
ered in the City Temple every Lord's Day to hear
an incomparable interpreter of the Scriptures un
fold the ideas of the Prophets and Apostles and
Jesus Christ. Americans in large numbers were
always found in his congregation. Many Americans
felt their visit to London incomplete if they did not
hear Parker. Many of us liked him because he
liked Beecher. One section of his church the
upper pews in the back gallery he called the Rocky
Mountains. Although he has been dead twenty

34 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

years he is still a power in the church. Everything
connected with him is held sacred. The big pulpit
Bible he used through his pastorate is preserved in
a glass case on a marble table under the pulpit. The
eye hole in the door of his vestry through which he
used to look on Sunday before the service to see how
large his congregation was going to be is pointed
out to the visitor with awe. Even the bathtub in
which it was his custom to take a cold bath immedi
ately before going into the pulpit is preserved, and
shown to elect strangers with reverent affection.
Dr. Parker preached not only twice on Sunday but
he gave a Bible lecture every Thursday noon
throughout his entire pastorate. This Thursday
noon lectureship became one of the outstanding
institutions of London. It is claimed that no other
man in the entire history of the Christian church
ever carried forward through so long a term of
years a course of Bible expositions. Parker's Peo
ple's Bible is known around the world.

Dr. Parker 'was succeeded by another genius, Dr.
Reginald J. Campbell, a man with the face of a
medieval mystic, and a mind that kept wandering
into new fields of theological speculation and expres
sion. He soon became known as the teacher of a
New Theology. The suspicion once born that the
Pastor of the City Temple was not altogether
orthodox, a large congregation was immediately
assured. There is nothing which so helps a city
minister to get a hearing as the rumor that he is a
heretic. He at once secures an immense amount of
free advertising, and there is enough curiosity in a
city of several millions to drive multitudes long
distances to hear a man who is alleged to have
departed from the faith. Dr. Campbell did not
possess the physical stamina of his robust prede-

THE CITY TEMPLE 35

cessor, and a few short years wore him out. Next
came an American, Dr. Joseph Fort Newton, the
pastor of a church in Iowa, a man of whom most
people in the East had never heard. Not physically
strong enough to preach twice on Sunday, Dr. New
ton took the morning service only, while the evening
service was given to a woman, Miss Maude Royden.
The combination was unique and attracted no little
attention both in Britain and in America. The grip
on the American mind which the City Temple had
gained under Dr. Parker was not lessened during
the pastorate of Dr. Campbell, and it was con
tinued through the pastorate of the man of our
own household, Dr. Newton. All through the war
the American pastor of the Temple shone as the
anointed interpreter of the two great English-speak
ing peoples to one another, and he maintained amid
many difficulties the reputation of the City Temple
as a throne of power. At the end of the war Dr.
Newton came home and his place was filled by an
Australian, Dr. F. W. Norwood. The City Temple
seems destined to do always the unexpected and un
conventional thing. It startled the world by reach
ing over into the State of Iowa and calling a Uni-
versalist pastor to stand in the pulpit of the great
orthodox Parker, and it gave the world another
jolt when it called to its pulpit an unknown Baptist
from Australia. Dr. Norwood had lived to the
middle forties in Australia as a plain, ordinary,
fairly successful pastor, and when the war broke
out he came with the Australian troops to the front.
Almost at once he was found to possess exceptional
ability for talking to men. The soldiers liked him.
They could listen to him an hour and then want
more. There were evidently powers in this man
which had hitherto been undeveloped. There was

36 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

an eloquence in his tongue of which the world had
not dreamed. Invited one Sunday while in London
to preach at the City Temple, he made such a deep
impression that not long afterward he was called
to be its pastor. From the first day to the present
he has been growing. He has now taken his place
among the great preachers of London. The City
Temple has today the congregations which Dr.
Parker had at the noon of his power. Dr. Nor
wood has the physical strength of a Samson. In
this he is much more like Dr. Parker than either of
his two predecessors. His mind is keen and alert.
His heart is tender and big. His sympathies are
fervent and broad. He has a voice of unusual com
pass and sweetness. His personality is winsome.
Upon this man every god has set his seal to give
the world assurance of a pulpit prince.

It was in exchange with Dr. Norwood that I went
to London. Never before had I preached under
the British flag. Twice had I been in England, but
on both occasions only as a visitor. This time I
went as an ambassador of good will, the official
representative of the Protestant churches of Amer
ica. I preached morning and evening on seven
Sundays in May and June. I preached the same
sermons I had preached in my own church. I did
not amend them or adapt them to the British mind.
I found the London congregation much like my con
gregation in New York. I felt at home from the
beginning. We understood each other. Having
lived for years in the published works of Dr.
Parker, I felt almost like a son of the City Temple.
I found the worship rich and reverential. I found
the music of a high order. The chorus choir of
sixty voices is one of the best in London. The con
gregational singing is full, and deep and moving.

THE CITY TEMPLE 37

The attention of the congregation is eager and in
spiring. The spirit of the people is cordial and
enthusiastic. One would travel far to find a congre
gation surpassing in any way that of the City Tem
ple. In one point the City Temple congregations
differ widely from those in the average New York
church. In the Temple the evening congregation is
much larger than that of the morning. This is
true of most of the London churches, and also of
the churches in many other cities. The hour of the
evening service is earlier than with us, being never
later than seven. On the lovely afternoons of May
and June the beauty of earth and sky seemed to
reach its climax about seven o'clock, and even at
half past eight it was still day, light and beautiful
as ever. Between six and eight is an ideal time on a
day in spring to take a walk in the park, or to read
a book, or to chat with a. group of friends, and on
my first Sunday evening in London I felt on my way
to church that I was sure to preach to empty pews.
I could not imagine human beings turning their
backs on the loveliness of God's out-of-doors. But,
to my amazement, when I entered the pulpit I found
myself face to face with two thousand people. Every
pew was full. It was a miracle. This miracle was
repeated every Sunday evening. I could not get
used to it. Every week I was overwhelmed by sur
prise. I still think of it with wonder. Among the
thrilling memories of my life there will always
remain the memory of those wonderful Sunday eve
nings in the City Temple.

The church is admirably located. It is easily
accessible from every direction. The bus system of
London is perfect, so is the underground. For
twenty miles in every direction from the front door
of the City Temple there extends a vast English-

3 8 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

speaking population from which a preacher can
draw a congregation. The foreign-born population
of London is negligible. London is English from
the circumference to the core. And London is
Protestant. There are Catholics there of course,
but it is a Protestant city. What an opportunity
for a preacher! What an open door for a man who
has a message! What a chance for a prophet a
man of vision and power !

CHAPTER VI

RELIGIOUS LIFE IN BRITAIN

It is like our own mixed. It is good and bad,
discouraging and also encouraging. It is one thing
in one place, and a different thing in another place.
It is always changing. It looks one thing to one
man, and another thing to another man. It is not
easy to describe any sort of life at the present time.
Things are in a great jumble. Wherever I went my
question was, "What is the outlook?" The answers
were diverse. u Are things growing better or
worse?" and the replies did not agree. Even two
keen-eyed theologians in Edinburgh to whom I pro
pounded the question gave me different answers.
The fact is, every man looks out of his own eyes and
reports only what he sees. Some men are appalled
by the darkness, and others are encouraged by a
few faint streaks of light. I have just been read
ing a sermon by a British Baptist Doctor of Divinity
and he says, "I wonder if we were ever so short of
principle or anything that could pass for principle
since William IV died. The old paganisms are
rising from their graves. The Witch of Endor is
not very far away." A London Congregationalist
Doctor of Divinity has just published a sermon on
"The Crumbling Foundations of Morality." In
London there is a preacher who sees the somber
side of British life so continuously that he has be
come known as the "gloomy Dean." ^ He is not the
only gloomy religious leader in Britain.

39

40 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

But while there are many things to depress, I
am sure that the consensus of feeling in Britain is
that things are not as bad as they were. The tide
has turned. The darkest hour has been passed.
The Church is slowly recovering from the demoral
ization caused by the war. Signs of spiritual awak
ening are seen in various quarters. I did not find
any of the leaders jubilant, but I found most of them
courageous and expectant. There is an optimistic
note in their preaching and an unquenchable song
in their heart. They are well equipped for their
work, and they possess the temper and mettle of
heroes. Britain is still deeply and strongly
Christian.

Like us they have serious problems with which to
grapple. The number of men preparing for the
ministry is too small. Too many of the churches are
without pastors. Too many churches have ^small
congregations. The number of conversions is de-
pressingly small. The financial problem with them,
as with us, is never far away. But Britons are not
prone to whimper or surrender. They have patience
and they know how to endure. The same ^ tide of
worldliness is flowing over Britain which is over
flowing the whole world. There is a crime wave
there as here. There are too many murders and
too many divorces, and the papers are filled with
stories of vice and wrongdoing. The good old
English habit of going to church has disintegrated
in many places. I was told often that Englishmen
no longer feel it their duty to go to church. They
only go when they want to go. They go when they
feel it worth while to go. They go only when the
preacher is able to give them something which is
rewarding. I heard of half filled churches in vari
ous parts of the land.

RELIGIOUS LIFE IN BRITAIN 41

It is in Britain as with us that some churches
are prosperous, while others have fallen on evil
days. There, as in the United States, much de
pends on the ability and devotion of the leader, and
much also upon the environment. There are places
where no one can do any mighty works because of
the lack of responsive, hearts. It was my lot to
have personal contact only with large and flourish
ing churches, and therefore my estimate of current
church life in Britain may be somewhat too rosy.
There are no more popular churches in London than
the City Temple and Westminster Chapel, there is
no church in Bournemouth equal to Richmond Hill.
There is no church in Birmingham greater than
Carr's Lane, nor does Manchester possess two
religious centers surpassing Union Chapel and
Albert Hall. In Scotland also I had personal
knowledge of only the best. St. Giles* Cathedral in
Edinburgh, and the Cathedral in Glasgow, the
Elgin Place Church in Glasgow, and Free St.
George's in Edinburgh where in all Scotland can
churches be found outranking these? In those ten
churches it was my privilege to preach, and as all of
them were filled, and some of them were crowded,
I carried home the conviction that the British are
great churchgoers.

So far as I could observe, England seems to be
singularly free just now from fanaticisms and de
lusions. I heard of no groups of people who were
bent on making mischief by pushing those who dif
fered from them out of the church. Premillenari-
anism, if it exists, is quiet. No body of zealots
calling themselves Fundamentalists claim to have a
monopoly of the faith once delivered to the saints.
The doctrine of evolution seems to be taken for
granted, and the assured results of the Higher Criti-

42 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

cism are well-nigh universally accepted. There is a
Congregational preacher in London who has won
notoriety by celebrating mass in his church, and
dressing like a priest, but he makes no impression
on the body of the faithful, and his erratic behavior
is smiled at as a fad which may any day be cast
aside.

All branches of the Church are increasingly alive
to the social question, and British Non-conformist
ministers venture farther into politics than is con
sidered good form in this country. There is a larger
use of out-of-door preaching there than here, and
clergymen of the highest rank do not count it be
neath their dignity to speak in a park. One Satur
day afternoon I heard the Archbishop of York
speak in the rain to a crowd in Hyde Park. The
Congregationalists have probably more able preach
ers than any other Christian communion. There
are no greater preachers in London than Dr. J. H.
Jowett, Dr. Robert F. Horton, Dr. F. W. Nor
wood, Dr. J. Morgan Gibbon and Dr. Thomas
Yates. English Congregationalism has pushed the
work of organization a point beyond the point
arrived at by the Congregationalists in this country.
They have districted England into eleven provinces,,
and each province has over it a Moderator. These
Moderators meet once a month in London to dis
cuss the common needs and consider whatever meas
ures may be necessary to meet them. I found the
Quakers holding a place of greater influence and
prominence in England than their brethren hold in
this country.

The Anglican church is awake to the call of the
new day. It is fortunate in the men who hold the
highest places. The Archbishop of Canterbury is a
man of wisdom and character, and has a catholicity

RELIGIOUS LIFE IN BRITAIN 43

of spirit and an openness of mind which win all
hearts. The Archbishop of York is not a whit be
hind the Archbishop of Canterbury in all those fine
traits ^ and high gifts which one likes to find in an
archbishop, and is exerting an influence which is
steadily expanding. The Bishop of London is one
of the most affable of men, a man with a big broth
erly heart, unwearied in good works, and dearly
loved by Christians of the whole Church of God,
Dr. Inge^Dean of St. Paul's is the most influential
preacher in the Anglican church, and is one of the
outstanding figures of the metropolis. While I was
in England he was contributing a series of articles
to the leading London evening daily in which he
discussed racily the more prominent topics of our
day. Dr. Jowett has been doing the same sort of
work in another London daily. English preachers
are determined to get at the people. They will meet
them in the church, they will seek them in the parks,
they will go after them in the columns of a news
paper. They will make themselves all things to all
men in the hope that they may save some.

The Anglican church has many problems, some
of them peculiar to itself. It is a divided church,
and only the high statesmanship of the Archbishop
of Canterbury has been able to hold the two wings
thus far together. There are Anglicans who dis
parage the Reformation and who would like to
bring the Anglican church to the ways and beliefs
of the Roman Catholic church except the supremacy
of the Pope. There are other Anglicans who are
one with Protestants, and to whom sacerdotalism is
a perversion of the Christian religion. Both schools
are alert and energetic, and there seems small likeli
hood of their ever being brought together. The
Anglican church has now what is called a National

44 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

Assembly. The proceedings of the Assembly were
extensively reported last spring in the London
papers, and the deepest impression made ^upon an
outsider was the bewildering variety of views and
beliefs held today by communicants of the Anglican
church. From the extreme radicals to the ultra
conservatives there are all imaginable grades and
shades of opinion in regard to every subject which
came up for discussion. Some of the reports
sounded like a report of the proceedings at the
Tower of Babel.

But all this variety of conviction is an evidence
of life. The Anglican church is very much alive.
If it was once asleep it has now awakened. If it
was once belated it is now forging ahead. A^new
spirit has fallen on it. It has taken a bold attitude
to economic and social questions. It has taken a
changed attitude to Non-conformists. This attitude
was revealed in the Lambeth Proposals on church
union. There was a fraternal and conciliatory spirit
in those proposals which marked the dawn of a new
day. The- ancient wall of partition is crumbling.
The old-time prejudices and bigotries are slowly
melting. The interchange of pulpits is progressing.
Now and then it creates irritation and evokes a
strident protest, but having started it will go slowly
forward. There is a better feeling in Non-conform
ist circles toward the Established church than I
found in my former visits. I heard nothing but kind
words from Free churchmen for their Anglican
brethren. In many communities rectors of Anglican
churches and pastors of Free churches are working
together in social enterprises with the utmost cor
diality. The Lambeth Proposals have not been ac
cepted by any Free church body, nor are they likely
to be. But they are being pondered. The discus-

RELIGIOUS LIFE IN BRITAIN 45

sion is under way. There is a new spirit in the dis
cussion, and what the outcome will be does not yet
appear. Organic union will not come in our genera
tion. When it comes, if ever, it will not come on
the basis of the Nicene Creed, nor is it likely to
come by way of the historic episcopate. But while
organic union is yet far away, a more fraternal feel
ing is already here, and comity is here, and friendly
discussion is here, and out of this closer fellowship
is going to come a further increase of Christian feel
ing and new forms of cooperative effort and fresh
victories for the Church of Christ. British Chris
tians are going to work together through the next
hundred years with higher mutual esteem and
greater efficiency than at any time since the Refor
mation. Without organic union there will come a
more intimate fellowship and a wider scope of con
certed action. Without a consolidation of ecclesi
astical machinery, there will come such a union of
hearts that men will forget the peculiarities of their
regiments in their zeal to storm the strongholds of
the enemy, and to establish throughout the world
the kingdom of love. Of two things I am equally
certain: The Non-conformists of England have the
spirit of Christ and are doing the work of the
Apostles. The Anglicans also have the spirit of
Christ, and they likewise by their sacrifices and
labors are in the Apostolic Succession. At heart
they are one.

CHAPTER VII
POLITICAL LIFE IN BRITAIN

An American living in England soon realizes that
in crossing the ocean he has not left democracy
behind. There is a democracy on both sides of the
Atlantic. The United States is not the only coun
try which enjoys a government of the people, for
the people, and by the people. Americans are not
the only human beings who love freedom, and who
insist on having it. There is wide and genuine free
dom under the Union Jack. A few Englishmen,
came to this country in the seventeenth century in
search of liberty, but the majority of Englishmen
stayed behind to fight for it on English soil. They
won the fight. In the eighteenth century we Ameri
cans fought for liberty, and in doing this we had
the sympathy and applause of the most English
section of the English people. The love of liberty
has always burned like a furnace deep in the English
heart. The English-speaking peoples have fought
their way to liberty in every part of the earth. It is
a boon which cannot be denied them. Britain enjoys
freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and the free
dom of the press to a degree not surpassed by any
other nation. Because Britain is called a monarchy,
let us not suppose that Britain is not a democracy.
Because she has a king, one is not to imagine that
he is a despot or that the supreme political power
does not lie in the hands of the people. The real

46

POLITICAL LIFE IN BRITAIN 47

ruler of Britain is the House of Commons, and the
House of Commons rules through the Prime Min
ister. The Prime Minister, more than any other
British official corresponds to our President. The
British King is not a monarch in the medieval sense.
He is a presiding officer. He presides at the British
town meeting. The people decide what shall be
done and what shall not be done.

At some points British political life is not unlike
our own. There is a note of pessimism running
through it. There is a common wail over the lack
of statesmen. The great men are all dead. There
were giants yesterday there are none today. The
men on the political stage are all mediocre. I
had often heard that the United States Senate is
filled with pigmies but I was surprised to learn that
that is the case with the British House of Lords. I
had been told many times that our House of Repre
sentatives has in it only third-rate men, but I was
amazed to hear that that is the caliber of the men
now in the House of Commons.

Britons and Americans are alike also in their
incapacity to be fair when once the political fever
is on them. Britons boast of their love of fair play
and they really try to be fair, but, like Americans,
they do not always succeed. When they fall to
mauling one another they lose their heads and their
tongues say things which are foolish. When I
listened to the stupid and absurd assertions and to
the petty and malicious charges and when I read the
wild rumors and crazy conjectures and twisted judg
ments which were printed, I felt quite at home. We
do it in the same fashion in the United States. The
microbe of partisanship is a queer bug. It works
havoc with the normal operations of the brain and
the heart. In political life, one can never expect

48 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

consistency nor can one be surprised at any combina
tions or outcomes. Political life is always a puzzle
and an astonishment to a man in his own country:
the political caldron of a foreign country is even
more incomprehensible and baffling.

Political discussion is more general there and
also more intense than it is with us. This is due to
the fact that Britain is compact and homogeneous.
London is the capital and it is also the metropolis.
It is the seat of Parliament and the abode of power
from it streams of influence flow to all parts of
the land. Everything done and said in Parliament
is printed in full, and the record is laid before the
whole British people within twenty-four hours. This
gives all classes an opportunity of discussing
promptly every statement made and every step
taken by the Government and also by the Opposi
tion. There is a public opinion in Britain in a sense
in which public opinion can hardly be said to exist
in this country. There is no city in the United
States which is the center and crown of our Repub
lic. The British political pot boils furiously because
there is only one pot, and all the fagots can be
brought together under that pot. We have several
pots and they hang over different fires. We have a
North and a South, an East and a West, but there
is no North or South, East or West in England.
Our public opinion is broken up into sectional opin
ions. In the United States we have vast alien
groups of citizens, each group holding its own pe
culiar notions, and it is not possible for any one idea
or feeling to sway all these groups at once. Months,,
and perhaps years, must elapse before any sort of
leaven can leaven the whole lump. After the East
has made up its mind we must wait to hear from the
South, and after we have news from the South we

POLITICAL LIFE IN BRITAIN 49

must wait for the West to arrive at its conclusions.
One can never say, " America thinks and feels so
and so," with the swiftness and certainty with which
such a statement can be made of Britain. We have
no center. Our metropolis is in one place, our cap
ital is in another. There are a dozen sectional
metropolises, each one the center of political opin
ion and propaganda. We have no mighty unifying
force. Groups of men, no matter how brainy and
powerful, are not able to work the miracles here
which can be wrought by groups of men in London.
When an American finds himself in the midst of a
people all of whom speak the same language, and
who are so close together they can exchange mes
sages in the same day, and who have common so
cial ^ and religious traditions, he finds political dis
cussions taking on a changed character, and he feels
that the world is a big village in which everybody
knows everything which is being thought and felt
and said by everybody else.

Moreover, the British Parliament is closer to the
people than is our American Congress. Britons can
get at their Government speedily. It is a tedious
ordeal to get at ours. Our Constitution was framed
in the eighteenth century, when mankind was in
the experimental stage politically, and men were
cautiously feeling their way toward a scheme which
would secure both liberty and order. We have
been so busy about many things that up to the pres
ent we have had slight inclination to alter the ma
chinery which our fathers devised. As a conse
quence we have a government which at sundry points
is antiquated. It no longer functions adequately in
its present-day environment. So afraid of the peo
ple were the founders of our Republic, that they
devised a system of checks and balances which

50 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

works with such deadly efficiency that sometimes in
an hour of crisis democracy cannot function at all
Our President can check the Senate, and the Senate
can check the President, and the House can check
them both. The President is elected for four years
and cannot be gotten out of office before the end
of that period, no matter what the people think of
him or of his policies. The Senators are elected
for six years, and they are fixtures in the Senate
chamber till the last year is ended, no matter how
they flout and trample on the will of the people.
The members of the Cabinet are practically chosen
by the President and to him alone are they re
sponsible. It is not thus in Britain. The members
of the British Cabinet are answerable to Parliament.
They can be hauled before the House of Commons
and subjected to questions whenever the House de
sires to question them. These questions and an
swers are spread daily before all the people. The
British people are in more intimate and vital touch
with their government than we are with ours*
Again, Britain has what amounts to a referendum.
No set of men are placed in power to hold office
for a fixed term of years. They can be thrown out
whenever the people desire other leaders. The
Prime Minister has great power but he cannot retain
his office after the people have lost confidence in
his leadership. An adverse vote in the House of
Commons is sufficient to upset any government, and
compel it to go to the voters to find out whether or
not it shall be longer sustained. It is this flexibility
of the British governmental machinery which gives
the British people their opportunity to make them
selves felt at once in working out national policy.
Government is immediately responsive to the peo
ple's touch. It is this consciousness of power in the

POLITICAL LIFE IN BRITAIN 51

minds of the British voters and the knowledge that
they may any day be called to exercise the power,
that imparts to political discussion in Britain pe
culiar verve and^ passion, and makes political life
there endlessly vivacious and exciting. Democracy
has Assumed different forms on both sides the At
lantic, because of diverse environments, and because
of different streams of events. Each democracy can
learn from the other. For an American there is
no more rewarding reading, next to the record of
what is said and done in Washington city, than the
story of what is said and done in the British Parlia
ment. We are kindred peoples engaged in a vast
and difficult experiment the experiment of making
democracy a safe form of government for the world
and each needs the stimulus and correction which
the other can supply.

An American is sure to take special interest in the
leaders of Labor in Britain. They are on the whole
different from ours. They are far deeper in poli
tics. They are abler men. They are men of greater
intellectual and moral force, and some of them have
the high qualities of able statesmen. They are not
men anyone can brush aside as negligible in political
discussion and action. There are not a few Britons
who feel that in the not-distant future Britain will
have a Labor government. Some look forward to
that day with gladness and others with dread.
The Labor leaders are on the whole radical some
of them exceedingly so. Whether when once in
power they will be as radical in action as they are
in theory, remains to be seen. They are all agreed
that our present social system cannot continue, and
that it behooves all men of sound mind to prepare
for the order which is coming. While their methods
of reconstruction are in many quarters criticized and

52 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

denounced, their noble temper is appreciated, and
the service they are rendering by keeping the ^ eyes
of the nation on the sore spots of modern civiliza
tion is recognized by all.

One who knows the temper and attitude of the
Labor leaders on the continent is surprised to find
so many of the British Labor leaders ^ members of
the Christian Church and workers in it. Some of
them are lay preachers. On the continent many of
the leaders of labor are professed atheists and most
of them are violently anti-church, whereas in Eng
land some of the most prominent Labor leaders ^are
professed followers of Christ, and condemn society
as it is now organized on the ground thaMMs not
obedient to His commands or loyal to His ideals.
On the continent the constant cry is for "Revolu
tion," but in Britain the Labor slogan is: "Evolu
tion under the guidance of the Spirit of Jesus
Christ."

CHAPTER VIII
MR. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE

Mr. Lloyd George is down and out. But some
men cannot be kept down, nor will they stay out;
and Mr. Lloyd George is that kind of man. He
will be up and in again, if not tomorrow, then the
day after. He is the most extraordinary Briton
now alive. The British Empire has never had an
abler prime minister, and it may wait centuries
before it finds his equal. I never realized how he
towered above all other men in British public life
until I lived in Britain. Like a Colossus he did
bestride the British world, and other men looked
small when measured against his huge legs. By
sheer force of mind and heart he had gotten the
start of all the British leaders and was bearing the
palm alone. And now lies he low and there are
many who refuse to do him reverence.

But his overthrow came about by a combination
of forces which can be easily discerned and meas
ured. It was by his virtues as well as by his defects,
by his successes as well as by his defeats, by his
immeasurable services as well as by his blunders
that he fell. The public will follow no leader long.
Aristides, great in war and peace, was ostracized at
last, and some of the men who voted against him
had no other reason for their hostility than that
they were weary of hearing Aristides called "the
Just." The incense burned before Mr. Lloyd
George made many Britons sick.

53

54 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

The wonder is not that he is out, but that he was
in so long. His position was an impossible one.
No man can indefinitely remain leader of a coalition
cabinet Liberals and Tories can be linked together
for a season, but not forever. Under the pressure
of war, extremists of different stripes can be welded
into one, but when the pressure is reduced each
group will go to its own place. Mr. Lloyd George
was always displeasing some of the Tories. How
could a man with his traditions and temperament
fail to do that? He was always giving offense to
some of the Liberals. How could the head of a
cabinet in which there was powerful Tory senti
ment which had to be reckoned with every day do
anything else? They told me that in the Liberal
Club his portrait had been removed from the wall
and relegated to the cellar. His was an uncom
fortable and precarious position from the first day
to the last, and it is amazing that the two days were
so far apart. He rode successfully the whirlwind
of war, and achieved the far greater triumph of
riding for four years the hurricane of the wildest
peace which the world has ever known.

His position exposed him to continuous misunder
standing and criticism, and laid him open to serious
and damning charges. To many he seemed a man
devoid of principle. He was called an opportunist,
a time-server, a trimmer. Those who hated him
did not hesitate to call him a trickster and even a
sharper. They forgot that a man at the head of
a coalition cabinet must of necessity deal in com
promises. There is no other path by which he can
get on. It was his business to seek and find the
middle course in which Tory and Liberal could walk
and work together. To the idealist whose business
it is to proclaim abstract ideals, the way of compro-

MR. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 55

mise js always the way of the devil. But to the
practical statesman who must find a path along
which a nation is willing to walk, the ideal best is
never possible. Politics, as Mr. John Morley long
ago reminded us, is always the second best.

Stating principles is one thing, and making pro
grams is another. The prophet must proclaim
principles but the statesman must plan programs of
action. He must deal with prejudice and ignorance
and passion and perversity. He must be firm, and
at times he must yield. He must insist, but he must
also concede. He must allow certain principles to
lie for a time in abeyance, in order that other prin
ciples may move forward to their coronation. He
must sacrifice minor interests in order to get the
major purpose through. In order to keep his coun
trymen together along a perilous road, he must
allow the second best to triumph for the present in
order that the first best may come off victorious in
the end. Such a man is sure to be suspected, mis
judged, maligned, and hated. History is not likely
to agree with the traducers of Mr. Lloyd George.
Coming generations will see more clearly than is
possible to us that his heart was true, and that even
when he seemed to have wandered from the path,
his eyes were on the distant and shining goal.

If a man's greatness is to be measured by his
power to attract and repel, then Mr. Lloyd George
has an incontestable claim to greatness. To an
American, there was nothing in England more un
failingly entertaining than the clashing judgments
of Britons on their Prime Minister. Some consid
ered him an archangel straight from the Court of
Heaven, while others feared him as Beelzebub, the
prince of the devils. Often I would pass in the same
afternoon from a group in which the Prime Minis-

56 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

ter was crowned with laurel, to another group in
which every man poured out upon his head the seven
vials of his wrath. I soon found that if I wished to
stir up an animated conversation in any part of the
land, all that was necessary was to mention the
name of Mr. Lloyd George.

In one thing all Britons agree they all admit
that Mr. Lloyd George is a great speaker. Woe to
the man whom he gets after with his tongue ! He
can use words which cut like sabers and which sting
like adders. He is master of vivid and unforgetta
ble phrases. His speeches abound in pictures. He
never thunders, but now and then the lightning
flashes. His most telling gestures are with his
hands. There are few orators who use their hands
so much as he does, and no one uses them more
effectively. There are certain ideas which I shall
never be able to think of again without seeing Mr.
Lloyd George's hands. He speaks quietly and with
deliberation. His words fall sometimes upon the
heart like flakes of fire. He wins his audience by
his candor and simplicity, his friendliness and com
mon sense. Even the hearts of his enemies are
sometimes softened by the touch of his magical
words, and, forgetting their prejudices, men are
swept away on the current of his persuasive speech.

I was impressed by his radiant vitality. He is a
live man. I saw him for the first time the evening
he returned from the Conference in Genoa. It had
been a long-drawn, vexatious, unsuccessful confer
ence. Mr. Lloyd George came out of that con
ference defeated. I expected to see disappointment
in his eyes. I was sure there would be marks of
fatigue upon his face. The man who met my gaze
was a man with a fresh and buoyant look. He had
the air of one who was just returning from a holi-

MR. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 57

day. He looked as a man looks when he has beaten
his opponent in a game of golf. When later on, I
stood face to face in conversation with him, I was
still more deeply impressed by the freshness of
his countenance. He looked like a man who had
never had a care or trouble. He shook hands with
acquaintances and friends with the jovial air of a
man of leisure. I asked myself: "How can Atlas
carry the world on his shoulders, and have a face
like that?" He looked as though he slept soundly
every night, but how could a man sleep when he had
on his mind the Irish tragedy, and the Russian
chaos, and the French entanglement, and the Turk
ish peril, and the Palestine muddle, and the taxation
nightmare, and the unemployment horror, and a
score of other perplexities and burdens? One would
think that the solid flesh would melt, thaw and re
solve itself into a dew! But this Welshman ^ does
not allow himself to be flustered by public business.
While in the midst of all these ponderous cares of
state, he had time to entertain friends and strangers
at breakfast and now and then to attend an after
noon garden party, and occasionally to give an ^ ad
dress in some church or at some civic function.
Within a few days last summer, he gave a lecture,
on John Wesley, and delivered an oration on Maz-
zini, and addressed nearly four hundred clergymen
at a luncheon on the Church and War. He has
evidently tasted of the spring of perpetual youth.
His face cannot be furrowed and his back cannot
be bent. They told me in Bournemouth that when
he plays golf on Saturday with Dr. J. D. Jones, he
remains over to hear Kim preach on Sunday, and
that he sings the hymns with the gusto and abandon
of a boy. Here, then, is a wonderful man who can
carry the greatest of the world's empires on his

58 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

back, with the tempest beating in his face and still
sing!

He has a genius for getting things done. That
was a gift sorely needed during the war, and so he
was transposed from one position to another until
he arrived at the post of Prime Minister. When
ever there was a job which was peculiarly hard he
was called. He always responded and he never
failed. The list of his achievements is a long one.
At the head of the list will forever stand the settle
ment of the Irish problem. Many of Britain's
greatest had worked on that, and in vain. This
man tried it and succeeded. He is a miracle-worker,
a wizard, this little lawyer from Wales.

His moral qualities are as fine as the faculties of
his mind. He has self-control and patience and
courage. He dared to fight even the great Lord
Northcliffe, the Napoleon of modern journalists, the
giant of the newspaper world. Politicians are al
ways afraid of mighty journalists. Even statesmen
walk with wary step in their presence. Here was a
journalist of extraordinary stature and renown.
He owned many papers. He raised up and cast
down when he would. He gave orders to Mr.
Lloyd George, and Mr. Lloyd George refused to
obey him.^ He defied him. Northcliffe hurled at
him all his thunderbolts but in vain, and North
cliffe, broken in body and mind, went down into his
grave with the Prime Minister still on his throne.
There is no more thrilling chapter in modern his
tory than that which recounts the defeat of the jour
nalist Goliath by this Welsh David.

In trying to account for the power of this man,
we must not leave out his religion. Mr. Lloyd
George is a religious man, a member of the Chris
tian church. He believes in Jesus Christ. He <ha$

MR. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 59

never concealed his faith. He believes in the church.
He attends its worship. He reads its history. He
revels in the biographies of its leaders and saints.
He is very sure of God. This gives him endurance
and hope. He is an optimist. In the darkest days
of the war, it was always light where he was. He is
not discouraged by difficulties, nor depressed by
obstacles, nor swerved by opposition, nor embittered
by abuse. Resistance endows him with new powers.
He is a stormy petrel whose element is the tempest.
He is an internationalist. He is a hater of war.
He is a believer in the League of Nations. He
believes in the Parliament of Man, the Federation
of the World. He is the friend of America. He
may visit us some day. When he comes, he will
receive the greatest ovation ever given to a states
man from beyond the seas.

CHAPTER IX

ANGLO-AMERICAN FRIENDSHIP

Mr. Walter H. Page, one of our greatest am
bassadors to Great Britain, wrote many wise things,
but none wiser than this: U I do know something
about the British. I know enough to make very
sure of the soundness of my conclusion that they
are necessary to us, and we to them, else God would
have permitted the world to be peopled in some
other way." There are reasons why the United
States should cultivate the friendship of all the'
nations of the earth, but there are special reasons
why she should begin with Great Britain. There
are reasons why America should be the ally of all
nations in the great struggle for liberty and justice,
but the nation with which it is easiest and most natu
ral for her to unite is Britain. One can think of ^
union of the United States and Russia, the United
States and Spain, the United States and Japan, but
all these seem artificial combinations compared with
the union of the United States and Britain. We be
long together, as Page said. We are necessary to
each other.

It is easier for us to work together than it is for
us to work with any other foreign people, because,
in the first place, we speak the same language. We
can understand each other without the aid of an in
terpreter. It is not easy to think in a foreign tongue.
A difference of language is always a barrier in inter-

60

ANGLO-AMERICAN FRIENDSHIP . v .

national intercourse. It can be surmounted but not
without effort. When we converse with Britain, we
are mutually intelligible from the start.

We have the same traditions, legal and social and
ecclesiastical. We are a conglomerate people.
Many nations have made their contribution to our
life. Within the lafit hundred years 31,319,000
Russians have entered our gates; 4,078,000 Austro-
Hungarians; 4,218,000 Italians; and 5,500,000
Germans. All these have brought with them in
herited characteristics and customs. Each racial
stock has left its mark on our thought and feeling,
and has variously modified our career. But all of
these foreign countries put together have not ex
erted the influence on our national character which
has been exerted by the 8,333,000 Britons who have
found a home under our flag. In the first place, the
British immigrants have for the most part been
men and women of superior quality. The immi
grants from Russia have been almost entirely from
the peasant class, and the same is true of the immi
grants from Italy. Germany has sent us not a few
from her upper classes, but the bulk of the Germans
have come from her peasant population. On the
other hand, multitudes who have come from Eng :
land and Scotland and Wales have been educated
and resourceful men of high social standing, intel
lectually and morally equipped to become active
forces in the shaping of community life. These Brit
ish immigrants have come at strategic times in the
course of our national development. Between 1620
and 1640, there came to New England 25,000 Eng
lishmen who exerted a greater influence upon the
civilization of the New World than any other
25,000 people who have ever crossed the Atlantic.
These Englishmen laid educational foundations

62 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

which have exerted a molding power over the Amer
ican mind and heart through nearly three hundred
years. These men cut channels through which
American feeling has flowed to the present hour.
They created reservoirs of life from which refresh
ing streams have flowed all the way to the Pacific.
It is because our colleges and universities were
nearly all founded by men molded by British culture
and dominated by British ideals that the soul of
Britain has been stamped upon the American people
as has been the soul of no other nation. We have
learned to think at the feet of Britain. It is her
poets who sing to us. What foreign poets can com
pare with Shakespeare and Milton, Byron and
Burns, Tennyson and Browning, in inspirational
power over American hearts? We are not ignorant
of the statesmen of other lands, but certainly our
American boys are more familiar with Cobden and
Bright, Disraeli and Gladstone, Chamberlain and
Lloyd George, than with the statesmen of any other
European country. The treasure house of English
literature is open to us because we have the key. No
other foreign novelists have ever found so large a

S'ace in our hearts as that occupied by Scott and
ickens, Thackeray and Trollope, George Eliot
and Rudyard Kipling. Nations fed on the same
intellectual meat come at last to possess similar
aspirations and entertain like ambitions. It is fitting
that they should work together in noble causes.

But it does not follow that two nations will be
friends because they speak the same language and
read the same books. There are reasons why the
maintenance of friendship between America and
Britain is especially difficult. Language is a pos
sible blessing, but it is also a source of embarrass
ment. We always know what the British are say-

ANGLO-AMERICAN FRIENDSHIP 63

ing about us, and it would be well sometimes if we
did not know. They also know what we are saying,
and this is not always conducive to an increase of
friendly feeling. Not a sarcastic or cutting word
spoken by either side escapes the other. Both na
tions have cultivated the freedom of speech to the
point of license, and Britons and Americans are
alike in being sometimes brutally frank. We speak
oftener of Britons than of any other foreigners, and
in our talk there is sure to be many a foolish word.
Britons also sin with their tongue. "Behold how
great a matter a little fire kindleth." The tongue
is indeed a fire. It sets on fire the course of nature,
which includes London and New York, and some
times there is no doubt that "it is set on fire of hell."

We are in especial danger of clashing because we
are so much alike. We are commercial above all
other peoples, and we go to the ends of the earth in
search of trade. Both of us are keen for conces
sions. We itch for special privileges. Both of us
want the earth. It is natural that we should again
and again step on one another's toes and fall into
ugly humors. Commerce works for peace, and it
also works for war. Because the Briton and Amer
ican are adepts in exploitation, it is inevitable that
there should be occasional clashes. In reaching for
oil wells and gold mines, both nations forget some
times their good manners.

Then again, we are not unlike in disposition. If
the Briton is arrogant, the American is bumptious.
Neither one likes to be talked down by the other,
and yet that is what both are inclined to do. Arro
gance passes easily into insolence, and insolence set*
ties down into contempt and hatred. If we were
more different in temperament we should be less
likely to quarrel.

64 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

Moreover, both peoples have memories which are
not pleasant. A Briton does not forget that Amer
ica was once an English colony, and an American
does not forget by what process that relationship
was discontinued. It is foolish to remember un
pleasant things so long, but people do it, and it is
not easy to change human nature. One of the black
est curses of war is that it lives in the memory for
generations. Americans do not forget the war of
1776, or the war of 1812, or the war of 1861, nor
do Britons forget them either. It is because of
these memories, which, like smouldering subter
ranean fires, burn on in the heart, that we need to
cultivate with unflagging zeal the feelings of ap
preciation and good will. The past becomes a curse
when we allow it to spoil the present and blight the
future. Britons now alive are not responsible for
what their fathers did in the eighteenth century;
nor are we accountable for what our fathers did.
We are responsible for the building of a happier
and nobler world. Remembering wrongs eats up
strength, and nourishing feelings of resentment is
degrading. The heart is healthy only when it
is sweet. Life is strong only when the spirit is
friendly. Instead of brooding over George III., it
is more profitable to brood over Edmund Burke,
and instead of meditating on Lord North, it is
more sensible to meditate on Charles James Fox.
The most English section of the English people
have always been our friends. They stood with us
through the revolutionary war and through our civil
war, and they will in every coming crisis be found
standing by our side. There is a higher Britain, as
there is a higher America; a coarser and more
earthy Britain as there is a coarser and more earthy
America. It is important that the better America

ANGLO-AMERICAN FRIENDSHIP 65

and the better Britain join hands in working for the
betterment of the world. There are great tasks to
be accomplished in the coming years. There are
mighty perils to be met, vexing problems to be
solved, giant enemies to be combated. No one na
tion alone is sufficient for the arduous work which
lies just ahead. Kindred nations must get together.
They must consolidate their strength. Britain and
America should work together because of their
enormous size. The biggest of the empires and the
biggest of the republics belong together in the great
conflict for mankind. For these two giants to hold
aloof from each other would be a betrayal of hu
manity. They are tEe two richest of all nations.
Gold has been given to them above all others. The
gold must be spent in the service of the human race.
To squander it in arraying themselves one against
the other would be a crime, for which there could
be no forgiveness. They are close together phys
ically. The Atlantic is but a brook, and even India
is not far away. In the Western World the two
nations touch. We have a common boundary of
3898 miles. That is the most beautiful boundary
line upon the planet. In all its vast length there is
not a fort, not a gun. That line is a revelation and
a prophecy. It reveals the disposition of the two
nations. We trust each other. We are neighbors;
we are friends. Friends we are going to remain
forever.

When nations are friends they help one another.
At the Washington conference, on the reduction of
armaments, Britain in the person of Mr. Balfour
came to our assistance. When Mr. Hughes, our
Secretary of State, laid before the conference the
radical and amazing proposals of the American
Government, Mr. Balfour promptly arose and de-

66 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

clared the willingness of the British Empire to fall
in with the American plan. His ^ attitude rendered
it impossible for the other nations to stay out.
They all came in. Britain and America standing
together set the pace for all the world. In that
hour it was made clear again what is the power of
these two mighty nations when on any point of
world policy they are agreed. There is no reform
too great to hope for if only the two English-speak
ing nations work together. There is no sore^on the
body of humanity which cannot be healed if only
Britain and America combine their skill.

But nations cannot work effectively together un
less they like each other. The hearts must be at
tuned, before the hands can do their perfect work.
There must be a disarmament of the heart. Suspi
cions must be cast out. Ugly feelings must be over
thrown. Hasty and irritating words must* be dis
carded. Mutual confidence must be established in
the hearts of the common people, and good will
must be permanently enthroned. It is not to be
expected that all Britons will think like all Ameri
cans, or that Americans will agree in all points with
their British brethren. Uniformity of opinion is
not essential to a genuine and rewarding friendship.
Again and again we shall differ in opinion, and our
policies on divers matters will be far apart, but this
need not break or even mar our friendship. Our
ideals are one, our purposes are one, our spirit is
the same, and therefore war between us in "unthink
able," as Roosevelt long ago declared, and a grow
ing friendship is natural and wholesome and to be
expected. By the decree of the King of Heaven,
we are comrades and friends, coworkers in the great
enterprise of bringing the whole earth under the
sovereignty of Love.

CHAPTER X

FOES OF INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP

Friendship is a delicate plant and is easily broken
or blighted. It is a fragile creation, and to be pre
served must be carefully safeguarded. Dr. Samuel
Johnson reminded us long ago how important it is
to keep one's friendships in repair. International
friendships are especially complex and unstable, and,
one of their most deadly foes is neglect. Nations
drift apart as individuals do through carelessness,
and ignorance of the fundamental laws of life. It
is only by conscious effort that two nations can be
kept together in mutual sympathy and good will.
If they ignore each other, they become in time vic
tims of suspicion, and all the other unholy feelings
which work mischief in the world. It is not enough
that friendly feelings should exist in the heart, they
must be expressed. Only the sentiments which find
expression are likely to survive. Two nations which
wish their lives to become intimately and helpfully
intertwined must lose no opportunity to express
publicly the sentiment of mutual good will. By
public and official acts the national attitude should
be made clear to the people. Diplomats are never
more profitably employed than when they are, ex
pressing to one another the higher aspirations and
purposes of their respective governments. It is a
revelation of the tardy progress of mankind in ra
tional living that every nation has a Secretary of

67

68 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

War and no nation has a Secretary of International
Friendship. If nations had given themselves to prep
aration for peace with half the zeal with which they
have given themselves to preparation for war, the
world would have been saved innumerable tragedies,
and the outlook for humanity would be today im
measurably brighter. Forming international friend
ships and maintaining them is a business which
should be pursued with great diligence and enthusi
asm through the generations. Great Britain and
the United States have no more momentous task
before them than the task of cultivating and ex
pressing cordial relations to each other. It is on
the basis of good feeling that all cooperative enter
prises must be built. Without friendly feeling all
efforts to construct programs of action must prove
futile. Britain and America should cultivate the
art of friendly speech. Taciturnity is an enemy to
be feared.

And so also is ignorance. Ignorance is a moth
which chews up the purple fabric of international
friendship. Because nations live apart from one
another they must of necessity lack that personal
acquaintance on the part of the masses of the peo
ple which is so essential in keeping the mind clear
of estranging illusions. It is a singular fact that we
have a tendency to dislike the people whom we do
not know. One of the worst perversities of the
heart is its proneness to imagine dark things of
people far away. In the ancient barbaric world a
stranger was always counted an enemy. We have
not entirely outgrown this feature of barbarism.
Because we do not know foreigners, we become sus
picious of them, and picture them planning evil
things against us. Our suspicions deepen into fear,
and fear if allowed to do its perfect work, builds

FOES OF INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP 69

up a deep-seated feeling of dislike. In a crisis the
dislike may flame up in a fiery hatred. Against ig
norance then we must wage everlasting warfare.
Knowledge is essential to a world which would be
happy. When we come to know people in foreign
lands we find them amazingly like ourselves. They
are not hostile to us nor are they hatching infernal
schemes against us. They want to be our friends.
They hate, war and love peace. They are our broth
ers. The habit of speaking disrespectfully of for
eign nations is a habit which ought to be broken.
Children in the home should be trained by their
parents to speak in friendly words of every foreign
nation. A sneer at foreigners should be instantly
rebuked. Teachers in the schools have no more
important duty than training their pupils to hold
the^ right attitude to foreign peoples. Racial
prejudice should be rooted out. National animosi
ties should not be allowed to grow. What does the
world gain by instructing the intellect in language,
literature and science if the heart is allowed to re
main a nest of ugly and bitter feelings? No youth
is properly educated who does not look with friendly
eyes on all the nations of the earth. We shall never
have a warless world until our schools become nurs
eries of good will.

Another foe of international friendship is a de
graded form of patriotism. Patriotism is a virtue,
but like all virtues it can be counterfeited and per
verted. It is a noble passion, but like all passions
it can become diseased and pernicious. Patriotism
is love of country, and so long as it is that, it is
commendable and ennobling. But when patriotism
becomes hatred of foreign nations, it is degrading-
The man who measures his patriotism by his con
tempt for some other nation is both ignorant and

70 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

vicious. Men like him are a stumbling-block in the
path of human progress. No country has reason to
be proud of a man who cares for no country but
his own. It is because of this degenerate form of
patriotism that demagogues flourish and that jin
goes are extolled by the ignorant as national heroes
and saviors. In every national legislature the jingo
is sure to be found, and wherever he exists, he works
havoc with international friendship. A group of
jingoes in two countries can, unless resisted, break
all the ties of good will and postpone indefinitely
the coming of the Golden Age. The men who
prate most about their patriotism are sometimes
among our most dangerous citizens. An astute
Englishman, disgusted by the selfishness and dis
honesty of the patriots of his day, once defined pa
triotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel. It is
worse than that. It is one of the most plausible
instruments yet devised for setting nations against
one another. Beware of the patriot whose stock
in trade is contempt for all nations but his own!

In the list of enemies of international friendship
journalists of the baser sort must be given a high
place. The daily press when in the hands of men
without principle becomes a firebrand for starting
international conflagrations. More than once with
in the last fifty years war has been precipitated by
the frenzied utterances of an unscrupulous press.
The freedom of the press is a blessing, but it has
brought with it a long procession of curses. Men
cannot safely be trusted with as much power as has
been granted to the modern journalist. When his
heart is noble he has vast opportunity for blessing
the world, but when his conscience is undeveloped
and his spirit is satanic, his power to work mischief

FOES OF INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP 71

is appallingly immense. Our generation has been
peculiarly plagued by a large number of journalists
who have had regard neither for God nor man.
When some future Dante writes the Divine Comedy
of our day, he will reserve the lowest round in hell
for the journalists who have betrayed their trust.
No millionaire can so defile society and blight the
hopes of mankind as can a millionaire with an evil
heart who owns a newspaper. By the pens of a
gang of anonymous liars and slanderers and rumor-
mongers he can defile the wells of international
good will and inject into the minds of millions a
subtle poison which works constantly for the dead
ening of all the friendly feelings of the heart By
his pen he can fill the world with ill-natured gossip,
and disquieting conjectures, and plausible rumors
which are only lies. He can criticize with insolent
speech the policy of foreign governments against
which he holds a personal grudge, and can hold up
to ridicule day after day the official servants of
friendly peoples. Like a pagan god he can throw
thunderbolts at the heads of Kings and Princes, of
diplomats and legislators, increasing the fever of
the world's heart and making all of the world's
problems more difficult to solve. Every country is
plagued today with this sort of pest, and no escape
from his ravages has as yet been discovered. The
world has many intricate and baffling problems, but
not one of them is more difficult or more momentous
than the problem of reforming the Press. How to
convert it from a war-making engine into an agency
working constantly for peace, is one of those colos
sal tasks to which future generations must bend
their mind. Already there are high-minded servants
of humanity not a few of whom are devoting them-

72 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

selves by their pen to the divine work of drawing
nations closer together and laying the foundations
of a warless world. Their number will increase.

Among the crowned mischief-makers of our^ gen
eration Big Business holds a conspicuous position.
It was Big Business which brought on the Boer
War, and it was Big Business which caused Russia
to fling herself upon Japan. It was Big Business
which worked along with other forces to ^ bring on
the greatest of all the wars. Ours is an industrial
age and to keep the mills and f actories^ all running,
the world must be ransacked day and night for raw
materials. Oil and rubber, coal and timber, gold
and silver and copper and iron,^ these are the treas
ures for which the hands of nations are itching, and
to obtain them multitudes of men are putting forth
all their strength. The world is manipulated today
largely by its manufacturers and merchants, its
bankers and financiers. Every nation has its pro
moters and exploiters, its investors and concession
seekers. Markets and raw materials and cheap
labor are not these the good things the great pow
ers are seeking evermore ? To^ assist them in their
quest, powerful groups of capitalists make use of
the foreign office of their government, and thus be
come the dictators of national policy. It was com
mercial greed which piled up the colossal arma
ment which precipitated the Great War. It is this
same greed which is now at the bottom of the^ un
rest in Europe, and which is prompting all nations
to fight one another with tariffs and all sorts of
trade restrictions. How can the world^ever settle
down in peace until this wild and insatiable greed
for markets and raw products is reduced? ^Britain
and America are rivals in the most attractive and
dangerous of all fields the field of making money.

FOES OF INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP 73

Even well-meaning and high-minded men sometimes
become overbearing and unscrupulous when they are
running fast for great prizes. When we begin to
count the forces which work against international
friendship we must not omit greed.

The ignorant man, the insolent jingo, the un
scrupulous journalist, the greedy* commercial ex
ploiter, these four are to be found in all countries,
and because they exist, a fifth man becomes neces
sary the military-naval expert. He is the fifth
finger of the hand which is crushing the world. In
order that his nation may have its place in the sun,
this military specialist studies the science and art
of war. He works out plans of attack and defense.
He invents new instruments of destruction. He
computes the adequate sizes of armies and navies.
He makes out the navy and army budgets, grasping
as much of the national income as possible. He
does not love war, but he is always thinking about
war. It is his profession. Because he is always
thinking war, he is always talking it. He cannot
help it. When he has opportunity, he writes about
it. His one theme is "preparedness." That is
something which no nation has ever yet possessed.
It is an ideal which ever lures us on. When he re
tires at an early age on a generous pension, he gives
all the remainder of his life to thinking and talk
ing war. In this way he fans suspicion, and feeds
fear, and makes it more difficult for nations to be
friends.

CHAPTER XI
PROHIBITION AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Britons are keenly alive to the fortunes of Pro
hibition in the United States. Every reporter who
asked me for an interview, had Prohibition at the
top of his list of questions. The British papers give
more attention to our Eighteenth Amendment than
to any other feature of our American life. Many
papers exploit daily the failure of Prohibition.
They could not do it more zealously if they were
paid for it. Sad stories of the havoc which Pro
hibition has wrought in the morals of the youth of
America, especially the young women, are spread
broadcast. The leading evening paper of London
last June had a reporter in New York who made a
practice of visiting the haunts of our fast set, sending
home long accounts of what he saw and heard. The
paper was considered decent, but it was engaged in
an indecent piece of work. Similar stories of vul
garity and excess could be cabled every night from
London, where Prohibition is unknown; but how
can humanity be helped by the recital of what the
coarsest and lowest are doing? The British press
is on the whole anti-Prohibition. In the journalists
of Britain the liquor hierarchy has its most devoted
and influential defenders. British brewers and dis
tillers are longing for the failure of Prohibition in
this country, and they diligently parade every word
spoken against it in our American papers. They

74

PROHIBITION AND LEAGUE OF NATIONS 75

know that if Prohibition succeeds here, the liquor
traffic in Britain is doomed. An increasing number
of ^ Britons every year awaken to the fact that
Britain is sorely handicapped in her struggle for a
place in the sun by her love of drink She is an in
dustrial and commercial nation. She lives on her
factories and commerce. If she falls behind in
these, she is forever undone. To keep alive she
must successfully compete with her most formidable
rival the United States. We have adopted the
policy of Prohibition. That policy we are not likely
to change. We are going to stop the enormous
waste in energy and efficiency which the liquor traffic
annually entailed. We are going to roll off the
stupendous burden which we have carried for over
a hundred years. We cannot do it at once, but we
are going to do it. Our workers, freed from the
poison of an enemy which befuddles the brain and
curtails the strength of the arm, will through the
next generations work with augmented vigor and
effectiveness. Britain half drunk will be no match
for America sober. Britain must become sober.
She must overthrow her Liquor Dynasty. The
public house must be abolished. It will be done,
but not now. The British take their time to accom
plish great undertakings, but in the end they
conquer.

There is a rising sentiment in Britain against
alcohol. I found it everywhere. The contrast
between public opinion today and what it ^ was
twenty-five years ago amazed me. Total-abstainers
have multiplied. At all the dinners and banquets,
I was impressed by the numbers who did not drink
wine. From thousands of homes liquor has-been
banished. Manyi organizations are energetically
working to create a public sentiment which will in

76 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

this generation overthrow the Liquor Goliath. The
foes of alcohol in high circles are numerous and
outspoken. To move in the best society it is not
necessary to drink. Britons are allowed to drink
the health of the King in water.

But anti-alcohol sentiment is not so far advanced
in Britain as it is in our country. There are vari
ous reasons. The liquor traffic in the United States
gradually drifted into the hands of foreigners.
Many of them were reckless and unsavory. In
Britain the liquor traffic is in the hands of Britons,
and some of them are representatives of ancient
and noble families. This fact has a vast influence
on popular feeling. Moreover, the public house in
Britain has never become quite what the American
saloon became. It is low, but not so low as our
saloon was. In many places our saloon had become
the rendezvous of thugs and harlots, a center of
political propaganda, a vicious force in civic admin
istration, and a scourge in community life. It had
become not only a disgrace, but a peril. There was
nothing to do but to abolish it.

The Church of England has never taken the ag
gressive and radical attitude to the drink evil which
has been taken by thousands of our churches. The
clergy of the Anglican church have in large num
bers always had ale and wine on their tables. The
people as a rule do not move faster than their lead
ers. Liquor dealers have never fallen under the
disapprobation of the English church, and large
gifts from them are freely and openly accepted.

Finally, there is an ingrained conservatism in the
Briton which compels him to go slow in making
changes. He clings tenaciously to customs which
are old even though they be a handicap and burden,
and he is loath to overturn institutions even though

PROHIBITION AND LEAGUE OF NATIONS 77

they have been outgrown. All these constitute a
bulwark of protection for the liquor traffic against
which the forces of the new age will for a long time
yet beat in vain. But the ultimate outcome is cer
tain. Drink has been for centuries the besetting sin
of the Anglo-Saxon race. The annual consumption
of alcoholic drinks in Britain is appalling. It was
Mr. Gladstone who once declared in the House of
Commons that the ravages of drink equaled the
combined ravages of famine, pestilence and war.
During the Great War, Mr. Lloyd George stated
in public that the most dangerous enemy of Britain
was not Germany but drink. I was told more than
once that Prohibition is sure to come in Scotland
and that it will come sooner there than in England.
The Scots are aroused, and when they once get their
eyes on a foe, they fight with grim and deadly
determination. Common sense will finally save
both Scotland and England. A nation which has
a debt of over forty billion dollars, and an annual
budget of six billion dollars, and an annual interest
account of two billion dollars, cannot afford to
spend two billion dollars a year on alcoholic drink.
The apologists for alcohol may fool all of the
people some of the time, and some of the people
all of the time, but they cannot fool all of the
people all of the time. Some day Britain and
America will walk side by side in the procession of
nations emancipated from the ancient curse of
drink.

While Britain lags behind us in Prohibition senti
ment, in her international thinking she is far ahead
of us. She has the international mind, the interna
tional heart, and the international conscience in a
high stage of development. We are yet in the juve
nile period of growth. At the third meeting of the

78 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

Assembly of the League of Nations held in Geneva
in the month of September, 1922, Britain was repre
sented by Earl Balfour, Lord Robert Cecil, and
Professor Gilbert Murray, while the United States
was not represented at all. Britain sent her best,
we sent no one. A company of American tourists
sat in the gallery looking on. A group of Ameri
can newspaper reporters sat at the press tables
reporting what the nations were doing. They could
not tell the world of anything their own country
was doing. Before the Assembly met for business,
it listened to a sermon preached By the Archbishop
of Canterbury. Britain sent to Genoa her foremost
ecclesiastical leader. Not long before, her Prime
Minister, Mr. Lloyd George, had declared in public
that the hope of the world lies in the success of the
League of Nations, and that if it fails civilization
is doomed. I found the leading clergymen in the
Anglican church ardent supporters of the League,
and the leaders of the free churches were not a
whit behind them in loyalty and zeal. At a great
demonstration for the League on Saturday after
noon in Hyde Park, I heard representatives of all
the churches voice their adherence to the League.
Among the speakers were Lord Robert Cecil and
the Archbishop of York. It was raining, but the
rain did not dampen the earnestness of the speakers
or the enthusiasm of the audience.

One of the unfading pictures of my life in Britain
is the picture of the Archbishop of York extolling
the League of Nations in a park to a crowd of Eng
lishmen under umbrellas ! Englishmen had said
during the Great War, "This shall be the last war,"
and this accounts for their fiery zeal for the success
of the League. Unless the nations of the world
are leagued for peace, another world war is in-

PROHIBITION AND LEAGUE OF NATIONS 79

evitable. This conviction lies deep in the British
heart. Wherever I went, I found this flame of
enthusiasm burning. All over England there are
local unions of the League of Nations, organiza
tions created for the purpose of educating the people
in the purposes and possibilities of the League.
When I went into the homes of prominent laymen,
I often found the whole family enlisted in the work
of advancing the League. To a Briton the League
of Nations is a solid and glorious reality.

I felt I was in a new world. I had come from a
land where it was commonly reported that the
League was dead. The rumor had never reached
England. I had often read in our papers that the
League was a failure. These papers had forgotten
to announce that fifty-one nations were members of
it. In my country the preachers were for the most
part dumb, not daring to mention the League either
in sermon or prayer lest they should lay themselves
open to the charge of meddling in politics. It
seemed strange to be among Christians who stead
fastly believed that the League is an instrument in
the hands of Heaven for securing the establishment
of the Kingdom of God, and that it is a plan to
which all Christians are by their profession of faith
implicitly committed. I had lived in a land where
many intelligent and noble men were entirely indif
ferent to the League, and where others equally
noble and intelligent found it impossible to discuss
the League with their friends without losing their
temper. The stone which our American builders
had rejected I found British builders making the
head of the corner. So contemptible and perilous
had the League become in the eyes of my country
men that many of them preferred to stay out of
the League with Mexico and Turkey rather than

8o THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

enter the League with Great Britain and France.
Internationally we are a belated people.

There are reasons why Britain should be ahead
of us. She has been in school for a long time. Her
far-flung frontiers have compelled her to think in
world terms. She has been obliged to carry on her
mind India and Canada, South Africa and Austra
lia, Egypt and Ceylon, and this has given the Briton
range of sympathy and wide horizon. Moreover,
she is nearer to Europe than we are. When Europe
catches fire, her own edifice is immediately in
danger. This compels the thoughtful Briton to
give to Europe continuous attention. Europe is
always in his eye and ear. We Americans are geo
graphically remote. We lie behind the barriers of
two mighty oceans. Our neighbors to the north
and south are small, and we have leisure to con
centrate our mind on our own internal affairs.
We are a world in ourself. Our territory is vast,
our resources are incalculable, our problems are
many and urgent, our domestic difficulties vexing
and baffling, and the average American has not yet
come to feel that he is under obligations to concern
himself seriously with the problems of people who
live far away. He is always ready to send money
contributions to any nation in distress, but beyond
this his education has not carried him. His heart
is sound but his experience has given him no train
ing in international thinking. He is a citizen of
America but not of the world.

It is the glory of Britain that in this great time
she has given the full weight of her power and pres
tige to the only practical scheme thus far devised
by the genius of man which offers possible deliver
ance from the tragedy of another world war. With
out the support of Britain the scheme would in-

PROHIBITION AND LEAGUE OF NATIONS 81

evitably have failed. The League of Nations is an
experiment, difficult and fraught with peril. Only
men of vision and heroic mettle can be expected to
commit themselves to so hazardous and beautiful a
hope. Britain in her statesmen and prophets has
declared to all the world that she is willing to take
the risk and to bear her full share of the burden.

CHAPTER XII
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH

u Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the
nations. 5 ' These, according to the Gospel of St.
Matthew, are the last words of the Founder of the
Christian religion. Christianity is a world religion.
"God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son." "God is the Father of all." "All
men are brethren." "God has made of one all the
nations of the earth." "There cannot be Greek
and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barba
rian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all
and in all." "The field is the world." The B Chris
tian church must carry the entire world in its eye
and the whole human race on its heart.

The religion of Jesus Christ has to do not simply
with individuals but with nations. His Church
must deal with empires and republics. It is futile
to train individuals to act toward one another like
Christians, if nations are left to treat one another
like barbarians. Individuals cannot successfully
worship Christ while nations continue to burn in
cense to Mars. The Church cannot win respect
for so-called Christian nations so long as those
nations dress in armor. It cannot induce adherents
of other religions in great numbers to believe in
Jesus Christ as the Savior of the World so long as
nations which profess to follow Him spend their
time in the manufacture of poison gases for the

82

THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 83

purpose of destroying other nations, and in drilling
men in the art of dropping asphyxiating bombs on
defenseless cities. We cannot induce young men
to ^ believe in the Golden Rule while they are being
drilled in the art of jabbing sharpened steel into
human abdomens. We cannot persuade men to
give themselves to a God of love while the Govern
ment is industriously sharpening the instruments of
hate. Why attempt to pray when the prayers are
drowned by the thunder of target practice? Of
what advantage is it to save souls when diplomats
and statesmen and journalists are permitted to
plunge the whole world into hell?

Here, then, is the supreme duty of the Church of
God in our generation. It must enter boldly into
the realm of international life and claim everything
for Christ. The Church has a world message and
a world responsibility. The law of love is binding
on governments, and civil officials are all answer
able to God. It is impossible to make permanent
progress until governments become Christian in dis
position and purpose. Statesmen and rulers must
act on the principles of service and sacrifice or be
thrown out of office by the Christian people. To
make their government Christian is the first duty
of Christian men. It is the mission of the Church
to establish on this earth the Kingdom of God,
which is righteousness and peace and joy. The
world cannot be joyful without peace, and the world
cannot have peace without justice. Just as long as
governments treat other nations unfairly, we shall
have a world torn periodically by war. There can
be no abiding peace unless political leaders love jus
tice. The Church cannot secure peace if statesmen
pursue policies which are wrong. The Church can
not abolish war if governments persist in piling up

84 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

explosives. The mission of the Church is not to
declaim against the horror of war but to overthrow
governments which pursue policies which make war
inevitable. The Church exists to create a friendly
world. We cannot have a friendly world until gov
ernments get rid of their pagan traditions and dis
positions. The Church must make disciples of the
nations, teaching them to observe all things what
soever Christ has commanded.

In the work of creating a more friendly world the
Church must begin in the home. Children must
be trained from the beginning to speak respectfully
of foreign nations. All insulting epithets applied
to foreigners must be taken from their tongue.
Other peoples should not be spoken of scornfully
at the dinner table by Christian parents. Children
early get the temper and attitude of their elders.
In every Christian home every nation, which is men
tioned in conversation, should be spoken of in the
language of appreciation and good will. The
schools from the highest to the lowest should be
nurseries of friendly feeling. A school is a mis
chievous institution if it biases the heart against
foreign nations. Boys and girls who are contemptu
ous of people under other flags grow up to be men
and women who justify war. The conversation of
society should be kept gracious and sweet. It is in
social intercourse that the seeds of war are often
sown. The unguarded tongue can keep fires burn
ing in the heart which may one day burst into a
world conflagration. The Christian pulpit must
build up in Christian people the international mind.
It must so emphasize international obligations that
men shall have an international conscience. If we
are to make disciples of the nations, then we ought
to think of them often, and consider ways of draw-

THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 85

ing them closer to us. A Christian Church is not
worthy of its name if it is not a fountain of friendly
feeling. The Church exists to extend the sway of
love over all the earth, and to this great work every
congregation should make its contribution. The
world's atmosphere should be made fragrant by the
friendly sentiments expressed by Christian people.
u Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be
called the sons of God." Every one of us can win
that title.

The supreme mission of the Church in the twen
tieth century is to create a warless world. We must
make war unthinkable. Three of our Presidents
have publicly declared that war between Great
Britain and the United States is unthinkable. That
cannot be said too often. We should form the
habit of saying it. All the people should be edu
cated to say it. The English-speaking peoples will
fight one another no more. Let that resolution be
written in the book of life !

If war between the United States and Britain is
unthinkable, then preparations for an American-
British war must also be unthinkable. Why pre
pare for a war which the mind is not allowed to
entertain? If it is a crime against humanity for
these two nations to fight, it is also a crime for them
to squander their money on the implements of
slaughter. Nations are stewards of the gold that
is given them. For every dollar of it they must
render an account. How can Britain and America
hope to escape the condemnation of Gehenna if
with their great cities in their present deplorable
condition, they squander their resources on prepara
tions for a war which sensible men have declared
to be unthinkable? A powerful group of militarists
is everlastingly at work in both countries eager to

86 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

build up the military and naval establishments be
yond all rational dimensions. By their incessant
chatter about the "next war" they ^keep the old
fears alive, and give all the old suspicions a sharper
edge. It is the duty of the Church to watch these
men to expose them to rebuke them. They are
among the arch-mischief-makers of our time. The
Church must keep its eye on all jingoes no matter
where they are to be found, whether in the House
or in the Senate, or in the newspaner office. Jingo
ism is a disease, a perniciou^ an ! graded form of
patriotism. Journalists who in their papers habitu
ally jab at ft reign nations, and by^their idle gossip
and poisoned rumors darken the mind and embitter
the heart should be abhorred and feared. ^ Politi
cians in high places who speak of sister^ nations in
terms of insolence and insult should receive the hot
condemnation of all who love mankind. No man
is fit to hold political office in the United States who
cannot speak respectfully of every foreign nation,
and who does not breathe in all his public utterances
the spirit of international good will. It is the
work of the Church to create a public opinion so
discriminating and powerful that any reckless rep
robates who may own newspapers or hold office
shall find themselves impotent to work harm.

The Christian Church is working constantly in
the interest of international understanding and con
cord. Even when its leaders are recreant or dumb,
it goes on drawing the nations closer together. It
is impossible for Britain and America to drift per
manently apart, for the reason that the Church of
Christ is potent in both countries. British and
American Christians are numbered by the scores of
millions and these great masses of human life are
always pulling the two nations together. In all

THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 87

British and American churches, the Lord's Prayer is
repeated a prayer that breathes the spirit of fel
lowship and forgiveness. j^When we pray we are
always together. And when we sing, we are still
together. Britons sing the hymns of American
poets and we sing the hymns of British poets. In
the hymn books the two nations are indissolubly
united. When we read the Bible, we are side by
side. It is always reminding us that we have one
Father and that we are. all brethren. It is always
pleading with .*. ''to pat away all bitterness and
wrath, and anger and clamor and evil^speaking and
malice, and to be kind one to another, tender
hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for
Christ's sake has forgiven us." When we celebrate
the Lord's Supper, we are in the presence of One
who is Master of us all. When we listen to the
preacher, he is always asking us to look to Jesus.
Every British preacher exhorts his hearers to fol
low Jesus. Every American preacher does the
same. Here is an amazing thing. The proud
Briton, rich in the possession of a long line of Brit
ish sages and heroes and martyrs and saints, turns
away from this great company of the immortal,
and urges all Britons to keep their eyes upon Jesus.
The American also proud of his country and its
mighty men turns his back on them all, and begs his
hearers to look only to Jesus. The Union Jack and
the Stars and Stripes are glorious flags, but there is
a flag above both of them, the banner of the cross.
Under that banner millions of Britons and Ameri
cans are gathered. American's and Britons iare
ardent patriots, but tfiey know that patriotism is
not enough. In their great hours they rise above
all forms of nationalism, and sit down in the king
dom of righteousness and peace and joy. Their

88 THE FRIENDSHIP INDISPENSABLE

citizenship, is in heaven. All Christians believe in
the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of
love. Possessing this spirit, they are not surprised
or frightened by superficial differences or temporary
estrangements. "There are diversities of gifts, but
the same spirit. There are differences of adminis
trations, but the same Lord. There are diversities
of operations, but it is the same God who worketh
all in all."- -Christians know that there is u one body
and one spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all who is above all, and
through all and in all." Confident that nations live
and move and have their being in God, and that
God is love, we are sure that the future is safe. If
love is in us all and over us all, then love will ulti
mately conquer. Our friendship is a growing one,
and nothing shall be able to separate us. We shall
have in the future as in the past our differences of
viewpoint, our clashes of opinion, our divergent
judgments, our occasional outbursts of ugly temper,
but all these are transient and only bubbles *on the
surface. Our hearts are intertwined. Our minds
are interlaced. Our lives are merged and blended.
Our ideals are the same. Our purposes and hopes
are one. We are working for the sway of love.
We trust all to love. We know that "Love bears
all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things. Love never fails."

Si

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