No incident that I shall relate further on serves better to point the chief international moral at which I am driving throughout these pages, and at which I have already hinted: Never to generalize the character of a whole nation by the acts of individual members of it.

That is what everybody does, ourselves, the English, the French, everybody.

You can form no valid opinion of any nation's characteristics, not even your own, until you have met hundreds of its people, men and women, and had ample opportunity to observe and know them beneath the surface.

Here on the one hand we had our Secretary of the Navy.

He gave our Navy the whole credit for getting our soldiers overseas.
He justified the British opinion that we are a nation of braggarts.
On the other hand, in London, we had Admiral Sims, another American, a splendid antidote.