Mr. Anthony Eden should be held to have satisfactorily disposed of the charge that Great Britain is not ready enough to cooperate with the United States of America in the development of world peace. He has promptly accepted an opponent's definition of the form which British policy in the Far East should take and thereby undertakes that "in this difficult and dangerous situation", Great Britain will go as far as the United States—in full accord with them—not rushing in front but not being left behind, There Mr. Eden neatly pilloried two errors of his predecessors in their attempt to secure Anglo-American collaboration, It is highly important that British statesmen should realize the danger of appearing to rush the Government of the United States right up to the limit of any particular statement which may emanate from Washington, Thoughtful Americans and their counterparts in Great Britain recognize the compelling interests which indicate the mutual advantages of close ce-operation, but they cannot be blind to the experiences of the past. Both countries are democratic in tradition and form of government. They will not accept what, in another connection, Mr. Eden describes as "orders from the housetop" or be overawed by an "ultimatum presented in the guise of peace". Mr, Franklin Roosevelt boldly stated his belief in the need for his country to take active note of certain tendencies in world politics. His statement went to the length of appearing to cut across some of the most cherished arguments for isolation. It has evoked a gratifying amount of support, but the voice of the critic has not been silent.
Mr. Eden therefore is wise in leaving the pace-making to Ameria. Up to that speed Great Britain is prepared to run level with her sister Anglo-Saxon power. She does not want to prejudice the association by making too insistent demands upon it. The test of Anglo-American unity is to be found, not so much in the pious utterances of speakers at Pilgrim Dinners, in the pleasant interchanges at cultural or social reunions, as in the hard facts of solid sections of opinion with which the President of the United States specially has to contend. President Roosevelt, as the first Democratic holder of his high office, since President Woodrow Wilson, is most unlikely to overlook that factor in securing national support for a defined foreign policy. The American Government is admittedly right in recognizing the futility of imagining that to a world war the American people can be indifferent to the point of successfully avoiding all part in it. Yet isolation is still a fervently upheld ideal in many parts of America and it is a powerful stimulant to the peace societies whose recent activities have been noted in China. When Mr. Eden assures the House of Commons that he proposes to limit British policy by eschewing precipitate action and by keeping abreast with American decisions, he is putting a wise check on certain enthusiasms and he is giving President Roosevelt relief from possible embarrassment.
The present exceedingly cordial and friendly relations between the United States of America and Great Britain have their dangers—not because they are unreal or liable to deteriorate but because the many cultural ties which give them special power of expression tend to breed forgetfulness of certain untractable and important differences of opinion. So speeches from Englishmen—like Mr. Wickham Steed for example lately spending a honeymoon in the United States on oratory bent—expounding the rational view of the collective system are liable to be interpreter by President Roosevelt's critics as so much insidious British propaganda designed to lure an innocent Republic into another world conflagration, to ensure that American fingers shall pull British chestnuts out of the fire. Of course Englishmen indignantly deny such charges. They affirm that they are merely giving expression of "their views in cousinly frankness. They are apt to forget that the cousin may be a cousin and may speak and read the same language but is essentially a foreign state with whom it is necessary to stand on ceremony at times—ceremony which the cousinly mood does not fit. Indicative of this difficulty which Mr. Roosevelt has to face is the apparent success of a brilliantly mordant continuation of Walter Mil "Road to War." Quincey Howe, a former editor of "Living Age" has sounded the warning in "England Expects Every American To Do His Duty." This effort to outline a practical foreign policy for keeping the author's country "out of the next war", has been hailed by one leading critic as a book which "should be the bible of every American mother who did not raise her boy to be a soldier—or a marine". Its thesis is designed to show how the forces which brought the United States to the rescue of the British Empire in 1917 are pushing it in the same direction in 1937. As Britain's position throughout the world grows weaker, her dependence upon the United States decreases. This means increasing pressure, increasing propaganda operating in a thousand directions as the zero hour draws near.
The book has, of course, been severely attacked by American upholders of the Government's policy, but it has nevertheless secured considerable support, It clearly forestalls many of the arguments which British statesmen might use in advocating Anglo-American ce-operation. That is why Mr. Eden's present restraint is so prudent. The technique which will more satisfactorily ensure that ce-operation derives rather from a determination to develop British independence of American support except such as spontaneously accrues from American assessment of American needs. Success in disproving the theory that Great Britain's position in the world is weaker will make a more valid contribution to removal of this sectional distrust of British policy than any amount of protestations of friendship which, in point of fact, can be reliably taken for granted and so escape the ignominy of exposure to cynical, if not always remediable, suspicion.
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Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.