THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



533 



It is common to speak of the English as an 

 Anglo-Saxon people, though the expression is 

 false and misleading. All Anglo-Saxons are 

 English but multitudes of the English are not 

 Anglo-Saxon. In his ode to Alexandra, Ten- 

 nyson strikes a truer note, "Norman and 

 Saxon and Dane are we " 



The main work of the Saxon was accom- 

 plished in the occupation and populating of 

 Greater Britain. He furnished the basic mass 

 of a vigorous, resolute, enduring people. The 

 Scandinavian, who was Norseman, or Norman, 

 was the most independent and venturesome of 

 all the early makers of modern Europe. 

 Through the vast expanse of land and ocean, 

 from Russia and the Black Sea to remote Ice- 

 land and Greenland, there was no region which 

 his passion for discovery and conquest did not 

 attempt. The English, sprung from the loins 

 of the Anglo-Saxon and the Norman, inherit 

 whatever was best in their progenitors. 



Unparalleled achievements on land and sea, 

 the building of an Empire in comparison with 

 which the Roman Empire was small, creation 

 and development of Magna Charta and of 

 constitutional government and law and, as 

 basis and compeller of such achievements, the 

 grit that brooks no defeat, are the contribu- 

 tion of no single tribe or grouo of ancestors 

 but proceed from the combined spirit of what 

 is enduring in them all. A brilliant French- 

 man finds the key to English character in the 

 one word, "self-reliance." 



This war has not created the Englishman, 

 He is no different now from what he was be- 

 fore it began. It has simply afforded fresh 

 revelation to himself and to us of what he is : 

 Often arrogant, but seldom vain ; fair in fight 

 and just in victory; warm-hearted under a cold 

 demeanor ; fundamentally conservative when 

 most radical ; insular and narrow, yet with the 

 genius of world-rule ; seldom loved abroad, 

 but loved and lovable at home ; despising 

 meanness and deceit and himself loyal to the 

 last. 



Were the Italians, the French, and the Brit- 

 ish to enter into comparison, no jury could be 

 found competent to determine which stood 

 foremost in the products of the intellectual 

 life. There is, however, one transcendant 

 name, an English name, though it seems not 

 so much to belong to one race as to all races — 

 Shakespeare, the interpreter of humanity, myr- 

 iad-minded, and of all writers the most un- 

 translatable and the most easily understood. 



From the British Isles the British race, in 

 circles ever widening, has encompassed the 

 earth. More than any other race in all the past, 

 it has carried with it civilization and equal op- 

 portunity and liberty. Under its protection in 

 the farthest continents and seas its offspring 

 have erected self-governing Dominions and 

 Commonwealths, whose proudest inheritance is 

 their British lineage and their British loyalty.* 



* See also, in the National Geographic 

 Magazine, "Great Britain's Bread Upon the 

 Waters," by ex-President William H. Taft 

 (March, 1916). 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 



Its medium of communication is the English 

 language, spoken by well-nigh 200,000,000 per- 

 sons as their mother tongue. Those 200,000,000 

 as a body are the most enterprising, most 

 wealthy, most intelligent in the world. No 

 other language, even in China or Hindustan, 

 is spoken by half as many. 



Beside the enormous host of whom it is the 

 birthright, its diffusion among other millions is 

 rapidly increasing. One is startled as he hears 

 it in the commands on Eastern steamers, or in 

 interviews between foreign magnates, or in 

 remote villages where presumably no British 

 person has ever been. 



In the heritage of that well-nigh universal 

 language the American has his share. In the 

 bonds and sympathies created by it he finds his 

 kith and kin. 



Eloquently were these inheritances recalled 

 by the modest gentleman who presides over the 

 British Dominions, in his address welcoming to 

 Great Britain the President of the United 

 States : 



"We welcome you to the country whence came 

 your ancestors and where stand the homes of 

 those from whom sprang Washington and Lin- 

 coln. . . . You come as the official head and 

 spokesman of a mighty Commonwealth bound 

 to us by the closest ties. Its people speak the 

 tongue of Shakespeare and Milton. Our litera- 

 ture is yours, as yours is also ours, and men of 

 letters in both countries have joined in main- 

 taining its incomparable glories. 



"To you, not less than to us, belong the memo- 

 ries of our national heroes from King Alfred 

 down to the days of Philip Sydney and Drake, 

 of Raleigh and Blake, and Hampden, and the 

 days when the political life of the English stock 

 in America was just beginning. You share with 

 us the traditions of free self-government as old 

 as the Magna Charta. 



''We recognize the bond of still deeper signifi- 

 cance in the common ideals which our people 

 cherish. First among those ideals you value 

 and we value freedom and peace. Privileged 

 as we have been to be the exponents and the 

 examples in national life of the principles of 

 popular self-government based upon equal laws, 

 it now falls to both of us alike to see how these 

 principles can be applied beyond our own bor- 

 ders for the good of the world." 



In the goodly fellowship of the Entente 

 Allies, British and Americans, for the first 

 time in all their history, have bared their 

 breasts side by side against a common foe. 

 They have bled together as champions of those 

 who cherish their own individual rights and 

 respect the rights of mankind. No formal 

 parchment, however drawn up and signed, 

 could further strengthen and hallow such alli- 

 ance of heart and purpose. 



As General Pershing has well said in his re- 

 port after the conclusion of hostilities, "Alto- 

 gether it has been deeply impressed on us that 

 the ties of language and blood bring the British 

 and ourselves together completely and insep- 

 arably." 



