MARK TWAIN ON ANGLOAMERICAN FEELING.

Evening Post, Volume L, Issue 114, 9 November 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

MARK TWAIN ON ANGLOAMERICAN FEELING.

In Melbourne the other day Mark Twain was entertained by the Yorick Club. In the course of his speech, as reported by the Australasian, he said :—": — " There is one fact he brought out happily which stupid people who speak the English language all over this world are prone to overlook or to ignore, and that is — let ua chaff and jaw and criticise one another as we please, when all isfeaid and done, the Americans and the English, and their great outflow in Canada and Australia, are all one. (Loud cheers.) You have not stayed at home all your lives, and you know that sentiment which I have felt so many times. I have been around a good deal here and there in the world, and there is one thing I have always noticed, and which you must have noticed under similar circumstances. Let one of us be far away from his country — be it Australia, or England, or America, or Canada — and let him see either the English flag or the American flag, and I defy him not to be stirred by it. (Cheers.) Oh yes ! blood is thicker than water, and we are all related. If we do jaw and bawl at each other now and again, that is no matter at all. (Laughter.) We do belong together, and we are parts of a great whole — the greatest whole that this world has ever seen — a whole that, some day, will spread over this world, and, I hope, annihilate and abolish all other communities. (Loud cheers and laughter.) It will be the • survival of the fittest.' The English is the greatest race that ever was, and will prove itself so before it gets done — and I would like to be there to see it. (Laughter.) "