THE ENGLISH.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIII, 24 May 1922, Page 2

THE ENGLISH.

THE WORLD’S BEST PEOPLE. (By Miss I. A. R. Whyte)." I belong to the most unpopular minority in England. I am an Anglophile. And what is worse, I am a convert. To be a briefly autobiographical, as an Australian-born Scotswoman, educated abroad, and chiefly in Germany, there was a time when, quite natural-

ly, I had no great opinion of the Eng-

lish. I claim, therefore, that I was once an impartial critic, and I declare, reckless of consequences, that, in my opinion, the English are the world’s best people. This opinion has nothing to do with Empire or courage or sport, or even the national predilection for cold baths. Nor was my ill-timed conversion a sudden, emotional one. It formed slowly, after deliberate comparisons, and was started on its way, oddly enough, by an American. He had been two days in this oountry, and had decided that the English were too docile. Three months later he informed me that what was really the matter with them was that they were anarchists in embryo. “I mean,” he explained, “that they are the only people in the world who have such consideration for each other’s rights that they have no need of laws.” As a relation I blushed modestly. But the statement sounded so wild that I felt sure that there must be some truth in it. So I took a fresh view of this people’s history. Look at it apart from its battles and its kings, and it is a peculiar, you might say ai unique, history. I can think of not other people who have become great at so .little oast to everyone else, whose civil struggles have been so free from mob-brutality and assassination, and whose reaction to oppression, even when the oppressed were not, of their way of thinking, was so prompt and vigorous. Even their treatment of alien and subject peoples has been relatively blameless (1 say “relatively” with a firm, and tranquil eye on the foreign critic and his own record) and nothing can exceed their sweet, reasonableness with their own often unreasonablle minorities.

And, to ask a few rhetorical questions, is there, any other country in thJe> world which seta up statues to its late enemies in the public squares and allows present enemies to parade the streets of the capital with banners, offering sympathetic and courteous facilities so- that they may insult the inhabitants without let or hindrance? I think not.

In my own experience—<amd I have been a, suffragette, and know tine worst that can be said of an English mob — the English are the kindest people (and “kind” involves “toleration,” and “toleration” involves “freedom,” for no people is free which cannot tolerate and understand its minorities). They come nearest to the state of loving their neighbors as themselves. There 'are times, indeed, when they seem to come perilously near loving them a, great deal more and a great deal too much. As when at, the end of some conference it is announced 1 with thanksgiving by their Press that “the French are satisfied,” or “the Germans are satisfied.” or “tfo Tibetans are satisfied.” No mention of the English. Nobody cares whether they are satisfied or net. Least of all, the English themselves,.

Now, this is all very beautiful. I am proud to be associated with this most Christian people. But I am uneasy, too. I. am not a Diehard or an Imperialist, or anything of that sort, and I thirst for nobody’s blood, but I do wonder whether it is advisable to be quite so civilised in an uncivilised world. To borrow from a fellow author, “Is it right, is it wise, is it kind?” Are not the English progressing too fast?

Other people, at any rate, seem to find difficulty in keeping up. When an Englishman’s face is slapped and he turns the other cheek they take it as an invitation to hit him below the belt. Nations who have tried to swallow his civilisation whole, and are suffering badly from indigestion, accuse him of having poisoned them even whilst they rifle his larder. Little nations kick him on the shins, and when he turns to administer chastisement they dance back with their fingers to their pert noses, shrieking “Yah, you can’t hit me because I’m so small.” Whereat the Englishman blushes hotly and apologises, and the Little Nations go off to swagger about how they kicked the giant and encourage others to come on and join in the inexpensive and amusing sport. (The idea that there is a chivalry of the weak towards the strong being a subtlety known only to the extremely civilised.) Well, all this may help the English in the next world, and I still hope that a partial Providence will look after them in this. But they do remind me a little of those admirable folk who always give way to other people in a. bus fight. They make confusion worse confounded—and they do not get on the delicacies. They insist on seeing the two sides of a question, which is fatal to their survival and very often to jus-

tice. For though it, is true that there are two sides to a question it is equally true that one side is always more just than another, and must be fought for whole-heartedly if it is to be upheld.

And it is this whole-heartedness of which the English seem to be becoming incapable. In their anxiety to consider the other man’s point of view they overlook the possibility that they themselves may be in the right. It seems to me, at any rate, that sooner or later the English will have to put this question to themselves in all seriousness—whether, with their peculiar gifts as civilisers, and their enormous responsibilities, they should insist on their own survival, even at the cost of pushing a few noisy and inflated people off, and, if necessary, under the bus, or go down to an honorable but ineffectual grave on which would be inscribed :—

“Here lies a people who were too good to live!”