A Straight Deal or the Ancient Grudge
time the seed of antagonism, establish in fact an anti-English "complex." It is as pretty a
ve the world in order to force upon the world the priceless benefits of their Kultur. Under the shock of war that complex dilated into a form of real hysteria or insanity. Our anti-English com-plex is fortunately milder than that; but none the less does it savor slightly, as any nerve specialist or
-of but alive, and lurk always ready to set up a ferment, whenever some new thing from outside that matches them enters the mind and hence starts them off. The "suppressed complex" I need not describe, as our English complex is by no means suppressed. Known to us all, probably, is the political complex. Year after year we have been excited about elections and candidates and policies, preferring one party to the other. If this preference has been very marked, or even violent,
a Democrat nothing good of a Republican because of the political complex, so does the great--the vast--majority of Americans automatically and easily remember everything against England and forget everything in her favor. Just try it any day you like. Ask any average American you are sitting next to in a train what he knows about England; and if he does remember anything and can tell it to you, it will be unfavorable nine times in ten. The mere word "England" starts his complex off, and out comes every fact it has seized that matches his school-implanted prejudice, just as it has rejected every fact that does not match it. There is absolutely no other way to explain the American habit of speaking ill of England and well of France. Several times in the past, France has been flagrantly hostile to us. But th