Only a continuous and sincere courtesy--over periods of strain as well as of calm--is necessary for as complete an understanding as will be required for the automatic guidance of the world in peaceful ways.
Now, a difference is come between us--the sort of difference that handled as between friends would serve only to bind us together with a sturdier respect.

We send a long lawyer's Note, not discourteous but wholly uncourteous, which is far worse.

I am writing now only of the manner of the Note, not of its matter.
There is not a courteous word, nor a friendly phrase, nor a kindly turn in it, not an allusion even to an old acquaintance, to say nothing of an old friendship, not a word of thanks for courtesies or favours done us, not a hint of sympathy in the difficulties of the time.

There is nothing in its tone to show that it came from an American to an Englishman: it might have been from a Hottentot to a Fiji-Islander.
I am almost sure--I'll say quite sure--that this uncourteous manner is far more important than its endless matter.

It has greatly hurt our friends, the real men of the Kingdom.