The coverage of the change in the British monarchy has rekindled some interest in the comparisons of the United Kingdom with the United States.
Oscar Wilde, the 19th Century wit and playwright had a British character in The Canterville Ghost comment, “We have really everything I common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.”
Through the years, George Bernard Shaw has been credited with turning that comment into, “England and America are two countries separated by the same language!”
The other day, we came across a newspaper column written by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, whose column, My Day, was syndicated in newspapers by United Features Syndicate nationwide. She wrote on August 17, 1946 that the relationship between this country and the United Kingdom is “a little like a family relationship where the younger generation breaks completely away from the older generation with the result that relations for a time are very strained.
In most families, however, when either the younger or the older generation is threatened by real disaster, they come together and present a solid front. That doesn’t mean that they will see things in the same light in the future, and it does not necessarily mean approval on either side of the actions of the other—nor even that they might not quarrel again. But it makes future quarreling less probable. It is a kind of “blood is thicker than water” attitude which makes them stand together when a crisis occurs and, year by year, brings better mutual understanding.
She contrasted the characters of our peoples—Americans being people of light exaggeration and the British being people of understatement. Americans are more “dashing and perhaps more volatile” while the British are “more stolid and tenacious”
Remember this was just after World War Two. She recalled a British soldier who said the Americans did not enter the war until they developed an interest in winning, at which point they capitalized on “the hard work and the losses which we have sustained.”
And while Americans might not approve of many things important to the British, she write, there is a belief that we can find ways to live and work together.
In fact, she thought, that attitude is basic to our foreign policy—that “we can find ways to live and work together.”
The Colonies, us, are the kids who leave home. But when there’s a family crisis, we get together.
Even in today’s world, three-quarters of a century later, she seems to have identified us.