fore us. Only by this means is it possible to disentangle the essentials of British and American policy from the prevalent vague expressions of good will and to find the greatest common measure of agreement between them.

Let us first put all economic questions on one side. Trade rivalry may make bad blood between individual traders, but it need not disturb good relations between nations, unless the governments concerned push the German doctrines in diplomacy and commerce to extremes. If modern governments, outdoing Don Pacifico Palmerston, were to entangle their respective states officially in the keen commercial rivalry of to-day there would be serious danger of political collisions between them. It is not in that sphere that the seeds of Anglo-Saxon trouble lie; and the Germans never erred farther from the truth than when they declared that we had gone to war with them out of trade jealousy. Indeed, what we have to seek to-day is first of all the reasons why America and Great Britain ought to act together and, having found them, to explore the causes of estrangement thereafter. Epigrammatically put, it is more important in the long run for the British and American peoples to understand why fate has yoked them in double harness for politics in the Western hemisphere than for them to see eye to eye in the Irish question. This implies no minimizing of the urgency of an Irish settlement, both on its own merits and as a factor in Anglo-American relations; but it does imply a reciprocal recognition of the fact that in the politics of the Pacific in China, the Pacific Archipelagocs, Pacific communications, Japan, etc. the British Commonwealth and America will coöperate on equal terms and, therefore, must know one another; whereas, in Ireland Great

Britain is the actor and America inevitably nothing more than the keenly interested and sometimes clamorous spectator.

Once this is recognized, the next step is to get a clear idea of the factors which will dominate the Anglo-American future. The first and greatest is the sea. Great Britain and America are islands. It was no accident that Germany employed the doctrine of the 'Freedom of the Seas' in order to inflame American sentiment against Great Britain during the period of American neutrality. It was a doctrine which appealed to all neutrals and especially to a great neutral like the United States, whose sole means of communication with other lands was marine transport. The mere sound of the words arrested attention. To the incautious mind they conveyed the conception of a new, generous, international policy under which the horrors of war would be greatly mitigated for the non-combatant civilian populations and all high-handed interference with harmless and kindly neutrals would cease. But, in essence, this 'freedom' is a device to enable any great military Power to pursue its own policy on land immune from the interference of sea power. Stated thus, no American will dispute the validity of the British rejection of the German plea; and every American who has given thought to the matter probably understands by this time that the defense of an island state which has great overseas responsibilities implies great naval power. The late Cecil Chesterton, in his vivid little sketch of American history, pointed out that naval supremacy is as vital to the British Commonwealth as the Monroe Doctrine to the United States.

The Monroe Doctrine itself is the second factor in which the British and American peoples have a common,

though unequal, interest. It is no part of the present argument to inquire into the evolution of this doctrine in recent times; it will suffice to note that Canada stands as the principal pledge of the British Commonwealth's respect for the fundamental thesis of the policy of the United States on the American continent. If British national life depends on the British Fleet, American security rests upon the Monroe Doctrine. There is here an obvious motive for a common understanding for the preservation of the status quo. As regards the League of Nations, we must make it quite clear, not only to our enemies, but to all concerned, and especially to neutrals who unquestionably suffered through our exercise of naval power in the war, that we cannot relinquish one ship or coaling station except to a League established as the effective agent of the general will. Similarly the United States must claim and exercise the right to maintain the continental security of America until a valid international and supra-national authority arises to guarantee the security of all peoples and continents. The world has taken a first step toward that goal and will, we hope, move resolutely forward; but meanwhile the plea for reciprocal recognition of American and British rights and duties is the most cogent argument for international peace. It is true that Europe has hitherto been the principal scene of war and that its present condition is not favorable to lasting peace. It is also true that European peace is Britain's greatest interest; but one of the effects of the war has been to increase the importance of the hemisphere of which America is the centre and the Far East the agitated fringe. Therefore, we must give the Pacific Ocean a much larger place than hitherto in the development of British foreign policy.

The Pacific literally teems with problems. It is an ocean surrounded by countries whose development in the twentieth century promises to rival European progress in the nineteenth. Canada, the United States, and South America have still far to go before they will have fully exploited their own vast resources; the possibilities of trade with the islands of the Pacific are great; Australia and New Zealand throb with expansive vitality; China is, perhaps, the greatest reservoir of undeveloped power in the world; Siberia is the Canada of Asia; and Japan occupies an economic and strategic position in the Far East comparable to the European situation of Great Britain. The economic development of this gigantic region will proceed with great rapidity once the aftermath of war is past, and it will bring great political problems in its train which must vitally affect the relations of America and Great Britain. Already the Shantung problem has given warning of the dangers which will lurk in Far Eastern politics, and tends to put Anglo-Saxon opinion on its guard against Japanese ambitions; and it is still too early to say whether a democratic movement in Japanese domestic politics may not ease the situation and pave the way for better relations between China and Japan. At present China has a clear moral right to expect support both from America and from Great Britain, and if this support is given we are not likely to) have reason to regret it; but whatever happens the Anglo-Saxon democracies have certain common interests which seem to invite coöperation in the Far East. Neither seeks territory; both possess territories which require protection; both are vitally interested in the 'open door'; both are morally bound to protect the integrity of China. Narrowing the outlook a little, we find

that Canada, the United States, and Australia have an identical concern in the problem of colored immigration, and that in a hundred lesser ways the lines of national interest in Pacific affairs tend to coincide. Within the region mapped out above there is ample room for the expansion of the trade of all concerned and a lively commercial rivalry could proceed without disturbing political coöperation. The advantages of such coöperation, which need not take the form of an entangling alliance, are too obvious to be recited; the obstacles to it are equally obvious and must be dealt with. The fact that the average American and the average Britisher tend to knock one another's funny bones now and then is irrelevant, though it is just the kind of plea which is used by the wrecking demagogue. We may as well recognize at once that personal questions will be exploited against political policies and that the Englishman's arrogance' will play a part in distracting attention from the main issue. A campaign is already on foot in the United States to rally all the elements hostile to England in an effort to prevent an understanding between the two nations. It exploits every feature of the British character and of British policy which is in any way open to criticism and has naturally played the Irish card for all it is worth during the past few months. Without Ireland the anti-British forces in America would be harmless; until Irish peace is achieved they will grow in power. It is, therefore, a matter of the most vital moment for the future of AngloAmerican relations that the Irish question should be finally solved. India and Egypt are lesser issues of the same kind, and the more America knows of our Montagu-Chelmsford policy in India the better; but the essential

The New Europe

point to observe here is that more can be done to win American good will by statesmanship in Downing Street than by propaganda in the United States. An Irish settlement, urgently needed for its own sake, will be its own propaganda in America; and the most that immediate publicity can do over there is to show how anxiously British opinion desires a settlement and how the course of recent events has tended to transfer the centre of the Irish difficulty from the English to the Irish side of St. George's Channel.

The term 'Anglo-Saxon' is to be understood in a political sense denoting membership of a great group of politically-minded people whose conception of government is the same. Their attitude to all public questions is prompted by their independence of government.' They owe but little of their position in the world to 'government,' much to their individual strength and selfreliance. The British Empire is the creation of the British character, not of any British Government, and the American Union was born as a protest against government from without. This fundamental unity of political temper is a powerful bond between the two peoples: it gives them a similar outlook upon politics; and, though their forms of democracy are different, the democratic spirit is the same. Thus, while the two governments might be at variance, the nations themselves ought to be able to appreciate the mutual advantage of close coöperation. Despite all that has been done and said during the last hundred and fifty years to keep them apart, their great political heritage stands as proof of a common lineage; and, when the estranging influence of the Irish question has been removed, they should regain their lost harmony in a new partnership in the common tasks of civilization.

THE ADVANTAGE OF BEING PREJUDICED

BY HOLBROOK JACKSON

IN the newspapers, and in all common argument and opinion, there is, perhaps, no mental state so belittled and despised as that known as prejudice. To say 'he is prejudiced' is enough to condemn any man; some people grow violent even in their denunciation of prejudiced persons. By far the majority of these objectors, however, pronounce their ban in a curt word or so, dismissing it with a superior air befitting a conclusion which has invincible logic on its side. Now I am inclined to look with suspicion upon all objections to the failings of others, and I do so because I find we are only too ready to blame in another those weaknesses which we secretly cherish in ourselves. For instance, what we call meanness in others we call carefulness, economy, thrift, and other high-sounding names in ourselves. It has occurred to me, therefore, that the same fate may have happened to this maligned thing, prejudice. It is a curious fact that people are always surprised at the existence of prejudice; they seem amazed that anyone should be so foolish as to be prejudiced. Nevertheless, the habit is so universal that if it had been fundamentally evil, society and all its institutions ought to have been wrecked many years ago. For are not all men prejudiced about something?

Some of the world's greatest men have been prejudiced about most things; and all women make a specialty of prejudices that is one reason why women are so delightful and so exasperating. But let us consider for a moment the mechanism of this disreputable thing. We say that a man is prejudiced when he is not open to

reason. And so he is. But is that wrong? When you jump into a river to save a drowning child, you do not reason about your action. If you did you would leave the child to its fate. There is every reason why you should. You have a wife and children of your own, you have a business dependent upon you, you are subject to rheumatism and to chills, and you cannot swim. These are all excellent reasons for keeping on dry land and endeavoring to fish the child out with a boat hook. But you throw reason to the winds, and jump into the water because you are prejudiced in favor of saving life at any cost, even at the cost of your own life and the happiness of those who have showered their love upon you.

But it is not my desire to prove that prejudice is always right, nor yet to beg the question by saying that it is not always wrong. Prejudice, like everything else, can be both right and wrong, and it can be both at the same time according to the prejudices of the onlookers. But I do assert unhesitatingly that prejudice has more chances of being right than mere display of reason. My reason for saying so, and I admit it is unreasonable of me to be so reasonable in the circumstances, is that prejudice is more apt to be in touch with those master-instincts which are the basis of life. It has the spontaneity of vitality. Look at the animals. Do they reason about things? Not a bit of it. They just act from prejudice and chance their luck; and this habit does not seem to have interfered with their evolution. When the first animal took it into its head to be reasonable it became a human being, and its descendants seem to have devoted the rest of the time to quarreling with the prejudices of others, while clinging valiantly to their own. This is the point where Nature asserts herself in

the complex artificiality of civilization. She sees that the spontaneous, the instinctive, the irrational things survive, and in our own moments of wisdom we agree with her by calling our prejudices intuition and faith. If you go among rationalists-that is people who have a conscientious and reasonable objection to faith in anything you will find that they pronounce faith as among the unpardonable prejudices. They are quite right in doing so, but they are quite wrong in believing that it settles the question. It does nothing of the sort; and reason ought to have taught them that the bad name that hangs a dog one day may save a dog the next. So it is with prejudice.

In a convincing proportion of cases our attacks upon prejudice are simply attacks upon reason. For no matter how reasonable a man may be in defense of his whims or beliefs or preferences, if he is proof against your own reason you conclude that he is prejudiced. In doing so, you overlook the important fact that you have been arguing with him in the hope of converting him to your own point of view. But it does not matter, because when you call him prejudiced he returns the compliment. I suppose the common sense of the business is that what we do resent is insistence upon a conclusion which can be proved up to the hilt, but which we still know to be wrong. That is the thing we usually denounce under the name of prejudice. But that thing is not prejudice at all. It is logic. Most of the abominable things in the world have been done in its name. There was nothing more rational than the Spanish Inquisition or Prussian militarism. Their upholders could prove reasonableness up to the last turn of the thumbscrew and the last goose step, but all their logic cannot intimidate the universal prejudice that their acts were cruel,

brutal, and brutalizing. Cruelty may be logically necessary, but it can never be humanly right.

Nothing was so remarkable in the eruption of vituperation born with the war, and nothing did so much to make the tragic catastrophe popular among all combatants, than the charges brought by one nation against another. We, and the French, denounced the Germans as barbarians, and they returned the compliment by yelling 'mercenary' at us and 'degenerate' at our co-partners in the contest across the Straits of Dover. We were all very logical and very wrong. There is much that is barbarous in your German, but his barbaric gifts did not make the war. There are many degenerates in France, almost as many as there are in England, but the French are overwhelmingly sane and healthy as a nation and even more far-seeing and calculating than the Germans. And as for ourselves, the charge of mercenariness misses our national characteristic with customary German obtuseness, not because we are not mercenary we share that quality with the civilization which exalts money as the symbol of value and test of joy — but because in the last resort we as a nation are moved by sentiment and prejudice more than by any other thing. The difference between ourselves and the Germans is that we felt about the war and were right, and that they reasoned about the war and were wrong. We had an inborn and instinctive prejudice against militarism -- Germany had a cultured and logically evolved conviction that militarism would make them the inheritors and rulers of Europe. Fortunately for Europe and the world, Britain's stalwart prejudices stood as bulwarks against that sort of thing.

Shakespeare may have had many reasons for writing Hamlet, but one of