The Anglo-Saxon race is on its trial just now, and, however strenuous the times, they do not deny us a measure of leisure in which to estimate the forces upon which we may rely. With battleships and regiments woman has nothing to do, she does but bring painfully into the world those who serve both. It is her mission to shield them with her love and devotion in the season of their helplessness and wait, watch, and pray while the battles join. Hers too it is to do what may be done to heal the wounds of battle, to comfort and to minister, to know the anxiety without the excitement of conflict, to see much of the horror and little of the glory. Yet, far outside the area of strife, woman plays no negligible part in controlling the destinies of nations, for there is a field of social diplomacy in which she labours persistently and the measure of Anglo-Saxon unity that obtains to-day is in no small measure the fruit of her effort.

It will be remembered that before there was an Anglo-American social life, relations between the mother country and the United States were the reverse of cordial. Many people in the States regarded this country with suspicion, many in this country looked upon the States with the contempt born of ignorance. Emerson, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others helped Englishmen to understand Americans, but perhaps the best work was done by women. As soon as they began to understand one another the divergent standpoints were brought into line, old prejudices were seen to lie no deeper than the surface of things. The freshness and vigour of American manhood, the honest, unconventional outlook of the country's womanhood were instantly recognised when social intercourse had been established and visitors from the States began to realise that in coming to England they were but returning to the land of their fathers. Mistakes are not immortal. The worst blunderer of a hundred years ago and the people who suffered most by the blunders have long been one in the dust to which all that is mortal of us must return. Latent and underlying sympathies have declared themselves. For thirty years I have watched the slow conquest of prejudice, the steady discovery of points of sympathy, the dismissal of the old stereotyped ideas that made for antagonism. To-day, when we are fighting for our life against a Power that has sworn to dominate civilisation or perish in the attempt, we find ourselves rich in the sympathy and moral support of all the North American continent, not only the British born of Canada are with us, but in the United States, despite the multitude of foreign influences and the great admixture of interests the general tone is manifestly sympathetic. The German menace has stirred Anglo-Saxon blood throughout the whole world. The observance of a strict and proper neutrality is no bar to American goodwill, our cousins know that this struggle has been forced upon us and that we would have avoided it had not honour forbade.

In the brief intervals of the work of organising the woman's service in my native county of Essex I have been trying to estimate the forces that have brought the changed conditions about, and I think I can see most of them. I have met most if not all the leading men and women of America, both in their own country and here, and no subject has been more completely canvassed in our conversations than the future that the Anglo-Saxon race may hope to share. My views, right or wrong, are my own, and I ask nobody to accept any responsibility for them; if they are correct they should help to explain the present and to indicate lines that the future may follow.

First and foremost among the forces that have improved Anglo-American relations I place the Anglo-American marriages that should go far to improve not only the finances but the breed of our English aristocracy. Byron writes of mixed marriages that they "ruin the blood but much improve the breed." I accept only the latter proposition. I think the young generation born of these marriages will be powerful, mentally and physically, that it may even be in time to stand in the breach and save the class to which it will belong from submersion. Certainly our aristocracy, enfeebled by intermarriage and circumscribed financially by modern taxation and the depreciation in agricultural values, degraded by the sale of "honours," would be bound to go under in the struggle with democracy, and if it is possible to predicate any of the results of the present cataclysm I should say that the democracy will issue from it as the dominating force in Europe. Another section of a royalty that tends ever to diminish has been weighed in the balances of war and will, I imagine, be found wanting.

Anglo-American marriages have given our cousins of the New World an interest in the old firm's business, have made them, even if in a limited sense, partners in the British Empire unlimited. I said as much at the dinner-table the other night and was promptly challenged until I reminded my critic that an ex-First Lord of the Admiralty, to whose genius all, including Lord Charles Beresford, now pay tribute, is as much American as English. Miss Jerome, Lady Randolph Churchill, was one of the first recruits to the ranks of the British aristocracy and has played no small part in English social life. Winston Churchill has had time to grow up, there are dozens of Anglo-American lads to whom in the course of time opportunity will be given. Who shall say that they too will not prove worthy?

The American girl, married into the wide circle of Britain's comfortable classes, finds many interests that unite the country of her adoption with the land of her birth. Visited by her family and friends, giving introductions for use in the United States to her husband's relatives, she has been powerful in spreading social intercourse and in establishing the vital truth that, in face of many of the great world problems, England and America see eye to eye and may work hand in hand. Philanthropy and social service are the finest solvents of prejudice between people speaking one language and, when that prejudice is not founded on fundamental disagreement, and is dependent for its maintenance upon ignorance, suspicion and the absence of intercourse, it cannot long survive under modern conditions. Every Atlantic Liner is a missionary of Anglo-American good-will. London and New York can exchange their thoughts in a few moments, the great sundering force of the Atlantic grows ever less, and the American girl has played a part in unifying Anglo-Saxon thought and sympathy that makes her social reward seem but a small payment for a great service.

Perhaps the great antagonising force in America has been the Irishman. Our administration of the Sister Island has left scars that had been past healing but for Mr. Gladstone and his successors in the office of Liberalism. Happily to-day we stand upon the brink of wiser times, a sane policy has promised to realise the national ambitions of Ireland and a grave danger has united in resistance to foreign aggression the two antagonistic camps. They will meet in the service of a common cause, they will face danger side by side, happily they may learn the full lesson of toleration and mutual respect. It is better I think, much as I hate war, that a thousand Home Rulers and Ulstermen should fall side by side resisting foreign aggression than that fifty should fall in civil strife each by the other's hands. The effect in America of Home Rule, and a union of hearts and hands in the national defence, cannot but be significant. The powerful Irish contingent, as generous as it is quick to anger, almost as prompt to forgive an injury for which atonement has been made as to resent one that is not repaired, will cease to be a hostile factor. Conscious that the old country has done its best to right a grave and lasting wrong, it will forget, as the American born citizen is forgetting, the days of Lords North and Castlereagh. All these quarrels, however serious, have been family quarrels, in the face of foreign aggression the old wounds are healed. I was struck by the splendid action of all parties to the labour disputes when war broke out. In twenty-four hours there were no disputants.

To-day the Anglo-American influences at which I have hinted find no opposing factors in their path. Good will is well-nigh universal, moral support and encouragement are freely ours at this grave moment when we stand so much in need of them. I have always thought, when I have been in America and when I have been entertained by or have entertained Americans at home, that there is a little feeling of pride in the old country. If our short-sighted policy of the third Georgian era turned friends to foes we have paid the price in full and to-day the Anglo-American marriages are giving our trans-Atlantic cousins the material for a noble revenge. They are coming to the relief of the class that persecuted them of old time, renewing its blood, refilling its coffers and preparing through it to administer the world's greatest Empire. It is no unworthy ambition that animates the American girl to-day when she quits the land of her fathers for the land of her grandparents and their forebears, and she has shown herself well able to fulfil it. The pages of Debrett bear witness to what she has done, while those who have been brought into constant and intimate association with her realise that she has shown exceptional capacity in adapting herself to the new environment, in mastering the rather formidable etiquette, in modifying old points of view, and in fitting herself to fill the rather exacting rÔle she has undertaken.

When I look round social London and see the many-sided work of the American women I feel that they will cover the whole ground. Their energy and resource are admirable and many of their houses are centres of philanthropic as well as social life. Think of the reflex action of all this energy in the States, think of the tens of thousands of American visitors to London in the course of the year and of the hundreds who see English social life as it is and partake of it, and the sympathy and understanding that are ours to-day can be accounted for and understood.

I have long been cognisant of the two great forces that were working, side by side though independently, to destroy Anglo-American friendship. The first was Irish-American resentment, a perfectly natural expression of feeling. Home Rule for Ireland was the only possible permanent cure, and the time for palliatives has long passed. With the coming of the cure we may look for the end of the complaint. The other force was more subtle, and was founded upon the presence in the States of tens of thousands of the Kaiser's subjects. They have carried across the Atlantic their old mischievous motto, "Deutschland Über Alles," and have lost no opportunity of giving it effect. A powerful press, a great financial group, direct encouragement from the Kaiser, whose policy—a relic of Bismarck's day—was to sow ill-will between Great Britain and the United States under all circumstances, have been their weapons. To conciliate the States, to flatter them, to suggest that they needed German help against British intrigue, to show their leading representatives every courtesy, even to affect a sympathy with democracy, all this was the part of a settled programme. It lacked nothing but success.

This is not the time to go into details of deliberate attempts made to undermine Anglo-American good will. On a more fitting occasion I may reveal some. At the moment it does not seem right to increase the prevailing bitterness, but I may say that many social intrigues have come to my own notice and have left me wondering at Teuton pertinacity, at the persistence with which large and small matters alike are pursued, and at the curious psychological failing that nearly always loses count of the human element. Theoretically, logically perhaps, the German advances should have been entirely successful. Unhappily for the Kaiser's ambitions, it was always fairly obvious that behind every courtesy, however extravagant, behind every diplomatic action, however grave or trivial, there lay an Anglophobe bias. It was not perhaps always conscious to its originators; the state of mind towards Great Britain in Germany is largely inherited, and I sometimes think it is well-nigh sub-conscious. Indeed, I would venture the proposition that it is more obvious to an American than it is to the German possessors of it. The United States is of course the world's melting pot; happily for us, and I think for the world at large, the Anglo-Saxon element is dominant. In such an environment Anglophobia cannot thrive, and I think the Kaiser's representatives have mistaken the actualities of the situation. Anglo-American squabbles are the little family quarrels with which we are all familiar; if one were to come from the outside and seek to take part in them, he would soon learn that such an intrusion was unwarranted and unwelcome. Instead of extending the area of the original quarrel it would reduce it to vanishing point. In Anglo-American relations the Kaiser must remain an "outsider," accepted while he behaves himself, but known all the time for the representative of a proud, powerful nation that is avid of world power and will shrink from no effort to obtain it, a nation that, if it is to be judged by its rulers, holds that the result justifies the cause, and that kindness, deceit, generosity, cajolery, persuasion, threats, candour, and deceit are all weapons that find a proper place in the armoury of a subtle diplomacy and may be called upon in turn. There is a world in which this standard of things passes current, the world of the company promoter, the international financier, the Jesuit who holds that the end justifies if it cannot sanctify. On the other hand, all these mental processes are abhorrent to the Anglo-Saxon. He is by nature plain and blunt, subtleties are foreign to him. It is his ambition to play the game, and he requires the game to be clean that it may be worth the playing. He likes to place his cards on the table, you will not find them in his sleeve or his boot. We know that the sowing of mistrust between the United States and Great Britain has been one of the chief pre-occupations of German diplomacy, we know too that it has failed as signally as the early and vital attacks upon the LiÉge forts failed. To accomplish its destiny the Anglo-Saxon race must stand together. We need not interfere in each other's quarrels, we need not model our lives to a pattern that is not sanctified by use and custom, but we will not allow any other nation to come between us and our friendship, or to interfere with that slow, sure growth of understanding and good feeling that may bring to generations unborn the blessing of universal good-fellowship and peace.

In all human probability the Teuton has postponed his own day for generations. The triumphs of more than forty years of peaceful progress have been bartered and have been used as gambling counters, and I believe that a double menace is now in slow course of removal, first from this little island whose sons and great grandsons in their millions are looking, anxious to see how we acquit ourselves, and from those South American Republics that purpose by grace of Providence to work out their own salvation without either the help or the permission of the Kaiser and his legions. When we have succeeded in our present struggle—I do not admit the possibility of a doubt about the issue—the way will be open for the triumphs of peace and for the passing of armaments and tyrannies. Surely in these great changes so long looked for, so eagerly anticipated on both sides of the Atlantic, the whole voice of the United Anglo-Saxon Race will speak in unison. I believe we shall play no small part in the re-shaping and rebuilding of a shattered and exhausted world, and that the genuine friendliness of our relations will make the task as pleasant as it is responsible. Side by side we have sought peace and ensued it, the overwhelming tragedy may have shown that "man is one and the Fates are three," but it will not alter our national and racial belief that we must develop the tranquillity of the world, that we must develop the arts of peace and arm for defence rather than defiance. Through the gloom and murk of the present hour I find myself looking with assured confidence to the world's future, and whatever the Vision I see the whole Anglo-Saxon race massing irresistible forces for the service of the world.