I have heard many an American speak of the English accent as "affected"; and our accent displeases the English.

Now what Englishman, or what American, ever criticizes a Frenchman for not pronouncing our language as we do?
His tongue has a different mother! I know not how in the course of the years all these divergences should have come about, and none of us need care.

There they are.

As a matter of fact, both England and America are mottled with varying accents literate and illiterate; equally true it is that each nation has its notion of the other's way of speaking--we're known by our shrill nasal twang, they by their broad vowels and hesitation; and quite as true is it that not all Americans and not all English do in their enunciation conform to these types.
One May afternoon in 1919 I stopped at Salisbury to see that beautiful cathedral and its serene and gracious close.

"Star-scattered on the grass," and beneath the noble trees, lay New Zealand soldiers, solitary or in little groups, gazing, drowsing, talking at ease.