Things which Americans hold against the British
Isaiah Berlin
On 6 July 1942 Derick Hoyer Millar, a senior official at the British Embassy in Washington, wrote to
Nevile Butler, head of the North American Department of the Foreign Office in London, enclosing “a
paper produced by one or two members of the staff here setting out various points which Americans are
apt to hold against the British”. The paper is not signed, but it emerges from a private letter from
Washington to London intercepted later that month that the author was in fact Isaiah Berlin, described
in the letter as “A v. clever Jew who works in the British Propaganda dept here. [The paper] has the
schadenfreude of the Jew finding that another race [sic] is disliked also – but it is very shrewd and about
60% of it is accurate.” A transcript follows.
Henry Hardy
The items in this list are chosen from among popularly entertained notions, few of which
are justified. The order is not meant to be any indication of relative importance.
1. The British are imperialistic. They do not believe in the equality of men. British
colonial policy has been oppressive, stupid, inefficient and insulting to the natives, with
the result that Malays and Burmese have been conspicuously disloyal in contrast to the
loyalty of the Filipinos. British hypocrisy in India, etc.
2. Rigid class system in Britain. The British aristocracy hold rank and position
through birth and not through merit or election. The British are ruled by feudal landlords
who are either hard-faced men, grinding the faces of the poor, or decayed parasites living
on the toil of others.
3. The British are going red. From a society where feudal reactionaries oppress
would-be socialist workers, England is turning into a regime where native Reds will
oppress feudal reactionaries. Either alternative is equally unattractive and equally remote
from the American way of life.
4. The British bunglers in high places: over-cautious, contemptuous of all new
ideas and defensively minded, tired old men bored with their own task.
5. The British are sitting safely on their island with 3,500,000 men under arms.
6. The British always seem to be being defeated and having to retreat. They are
prepared to die bravely but not to take trouble. They sipped tea at Singapore while the
Japs were at the gate; British officers are either Bourbons or lackadaisical.
7. Lend-Lease is stripping America to supply the British who have not even paid
their war debts. The British use US imports to compete with the US in Latin America,
and are generally feathering their nests rather than winning the war. They are thinking
more intensely about their own post-war position vis-à-vis America than of how to win
the war.
8. The British are much too adroit for simple, honest Americans. They believe in
“balance of power”, in “divide and rule”. They virtually encourage wars, provided these
preserve their own position as arbiters of other people’s destinies. The Treaty of
Versailles, to which Hitler and all other evils are due, is a typical example of cunning
British diplomacy, which wants to keep the world divided.
9. US foreign-language groups tend to think of the British as belonging to the
class of the wicked landlord nations whose victims fled to the US in search of liberty.
The Irish naturally originated this view, but the Poles or Slovaks think of the British as
analogous to their own Central European tyrants. Britain alone of the original group of
“master” nations survives comparatively unimpaired, since the Austrians and the
Russians are no longer possible targets.
10. Anti-British sentiment is a part of the central patriotic American tradition.
Whereas e.g. anti-Semitism or anti-Catholicism is equally definitely disreputable,
prejudiced etc., Anglophobia is compatible with any given set of other sentiments. The
interventionists, for example, have been known to express relief at the fact that since
Pearl Harbour they could once more give vent to anti-British sentiments without thereby
playing their enemies’ game. Anglophobia is a proof of vigorous Americanism.
11. Superior airs of British persons in America and their unspoken attitude that
theirs is the right way of doing things, by the mere fact that they do it that way. Their
“when in Rome, do as the English do” attitude.
12. British lack of forthrightness in speech. Englishmen in America substitute
caution and reserve for tact, do not allow themselves to agree or disagree vehemently
with the American speaker’s point of view, but are expected to remark that it is “very
interesting”. They are professional seers of both (or more) sides of every question, which
irritates all parties, and consequently appear to have no strongly held, honest convictions
of their own on any subject. They are therefore either frivolous or concealing something.
13. Fear of treading on American corns and embarrassment at American gusto
and over-emphasis produce a nervous reserve on the part of the British, which in its turn
embarrasses Americans and makes them distrustful. Hence greater popularity of hearty
British extroverts over more delicate natures.
14. Irritation caused by over-civilized English accent as opposed to Scots, Welsh
or any other home-bred accent. Any burr is preferred to the smooth, well-bred English
voice, which conveys artificiality, insincerity etc. This is more important than might at
first appear. A strong Yorkshire or Lancashire accent is a greater asset to e.g. a British
lecturer than anything else, without qualification. This includes a good strong cockney
accent.
15. Washington
The mere concentration of British in Washington causes a certain amount of
adverse feeling due to the tendency of British people to take refuge in each other’s
company. The Embassy in particular as opposed to the technical missions has a quite
fantastically low reputation. It is regarded as snobbish, arrogant, patronizing, dim, asleep
and a home of reactionary and generally disreputable views. It is thought of as containing
large numbers of effete diplomats who make no attempt to keep in touch with what is
happening outside their own restricted circle. This belief is shared and to some extent
encouraged by many members of the missions themselves. Believing that the Embassy
staff is very numerous, and not having the remotest idea what it does, they think
themselves entitled to be constantly looked after by the Embassy, and if their contacts
with the Embassy turn out to be few and far between they blame it on the laziness and
snobbery of the staff.
16. Absence of an adequate impression of British industrial and military effort,
which is at least partly due to the poor and shallow quality of news despatches from
American correspondents in England, notably in the New York Times.
17. Ricochet of the lack of understanding of the US in England (owing to the
null-and-voidness of US diplomats in London). Winant,1 who is very popular, is
unfavourable to the prospect of US propaganda in England.
18. Unpopular character of US Anglophiles, who are regarded as a group of idle
rich, concentrated on the East coast; their love of the English is regarded as a species of
snobbery and un-Americanism.
19. A certain embarrassment vis-à-vis the English on account of the relatively
small degree of suffering which the US has so far borne as a result of the war. This is a
function of the “phoney war” atmosphere which is still prevalent here and corresponds
1
John Gilbert Winant (1889–1947), US ambassador to Britain 1941–6.
to the embarrassment felt by the English and French in the face of Poles and
Norwegians before May 1940.
20. Stonewall attitude on the part of British officials in dealing with aggrieved
groups, e.g. Chinese, Jews etc. Few high British officials display or simulate a sufficient
degree of interest or understanding of the problems submitted to them, and display mild
weariness, which causes more irritation than actual failure to comply with requests, so
that even when grievances are remedied, resentment continues.
21. Certain British books and films (notably the film Ships with Wings)2 display a
falsity of feeling and an acute class-consciousness that does great damage.
22. The Chinese and Indians, although present in relatively small quantities,
attract a great deal of romantic interest, and have put across a very dark picture of the
British in Asia.
23. All the Roosevelt-haters hate the English because they are held to be popular
with the President.
Crown copyright material in the British Public Record Office is reproduced by permission of the
Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. The reference for this document is FO
371/30656, A6681/60/45, 81–5.
2
This somewhat escapist war film, directed by Sergey Nolbandov, was premièred in
November 1941.