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 there was Lafayette, there was Rochambeau, and the great service France did us then against England.