Sir Esme Speaks

Sir Esme William Howard, British Ambassador to the U. S., stood up in Boston, last week, before banqueting members of the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants and proved once more that he commands most of the sweet uses of loquacity.

Having settled his light, sturdy frame in an easy stance, having stroked once his neat grey mustache, Sir Esme became comfortably and consolingly humorous on the subject of such anti-British tirades as are hurled from the U. S. by William Hale Thompson, blatant Mayor of Chicago (TIME, Oct. 10).

The blood and breeding of a Howard* are not compatible with direct censure of a "Big Bill" Thompson; but the direction of Sir Esme's lance was evident when he commenced to tilt, thus: "We have heard so much lately from another place of the danger of British propaganda in this country that I was beginning to wonder whether the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers gathered here to celebrate the landing of their ancestors at Plymouth might not have feared that the presence of the British Ambassador tonight might bring with it some dread infection of the terrible disease known an Anglo-American friendship. It is, of course, a most dangerous malady and may lead to results almost too appalling to contemplate.

"I fear nevertheless I am badly infected with it and may perhaps spread the microbe. Indeed, I am bold enough, unashamed enough, to say that I should be glad to do so.

"My reason for desiring friendship and understanding between our two countries I have never sought to hide. ... I believe that the peace of the world depends largely upon that understanding."

To display solid grounds for such an understanding Sir Esme sketched lengthily and wittily what he deemed the superficial differences but fundamental similarities between Britons and citizens of the U. S. Concluded he: "Whatever the differences between Americans and English may be--and they are many--they have at least in common these two great ideals in government that were brought here by the Pilgrim Fathers and the other early English settlers, because they have inherited them in the blood: 'No taxation without representation'; and, 'No revolution against the declared will of the majority.' To that extent we can always understand each other, even if other things are difficult of comprehension."

*Sir Esme is a scion of the Catholic branch of that excessively ancient family, founded by one William Howard, a Norfolk lawyer, in the 13th Century, which is now headed by Bernard Marmaduke FitzAlan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk, Hereditary Marshal and Chief Butler of England, aged 19.