The sense of solidarity counts for
much in one's contentment, but the sense of winning one's game
counts for more; and in London, in 1898, the scene was singularly
interesting to the last survivor of the Legation of 1861. He
thought himself perhaps the only person living who could get full
enjoyment of the drama. He carried every scene of it, in a
century and a half since the Stamp Act, quite alive in his mind
-- all the interminable disputes of his disputatious ancestors as
far back as the year 1750 -- as well as his own insignificance in
the Civil War, every step in which had the object of bringing
England into an American system. For this they had written
libraries of argument and remonstrance, and had piled war on war,
losing their tempers for life, and souring the gentle and patient
Puritan nature of their descendants, until even their private
secretaries at times used language almost intemperate; and
suddenly, by pure chance, the blessing fell on Hay. After two
hundred years of stupid and greedy blundering, which no argument
and no violence affected, the people of England learned their
lesson just at the moment when Hay would otherwise have faced a
flood of the old anxieties. Hay himself scarcely knew how
grateful he should be, for to him the change came almost of
course. He saw only the necessary stages that had led to it, and
to him they seemed natural; but to Adams, still living in the
atmosphere of Palmerston and John Russell, the sudden appearance
of Germany as the grizzly terror which, in twenty years effected
what Adamses had tried for two hundred in vain -- frightened
England into America's arms -- seemed as melodramatic as any plot
of Napoleon the Great.
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