To the Editor of the "Nowru-Cutwa Dany News"
Much obliged for your _excellent, exposition and clarification of British policy. In this, however, you are somewhat less" successful than Mr. William Phillips who, convenient juxtaposition and with the utmost simplicity and lucidity, proceeds to explain to the world {that impenetrable mystery and that bewildering puzzle whic American policy is to the average European. To anyone rigidly set in the old Buropean habits of thought nothing:
more incomprehensible, more inconsistent or more irritating than American conduct, oficial or private, national or individual, since, before or after 1914 er 1919. Don't they stil argue as to. "wko won the war." and why? "And the paternity of the League of Nations? "And those unald war debis? And the World Court? And American aloofness and Isolationism? "And American Far ton?
Mr. Phillips' statement should contribuic much to the needful Instruc= enlightenment of more or int. Buropeans, but it does nor even touch: upon, the fundamental reason for America's much-discussed attitude towards European affairs, "To Americans the European politieat about as inviting Ing, as necessary and as senseless, as 'a sireer dog fight. A few dozen shaky Buropean governments, a few hundred million quarreling, Nghting and {tating Europeans certainly donot constitute either a safe or a respect able company for them. If- we needs must" explain American aleotuess from European quarrels, we may well define its causes in this simple though homely" fashion. Look at what they wot from their last inter vention!
But if American policy has been! inspired by the loftiest and nobles! of idealistic sentiment, ils practical application has been determined by the inexorable dictates of prudence jand hardheaded sense, thereby a5- suming a appearance or semblance of cynical selfishness. On this point fat Toast it has been consistent—evan if, allowing for. tke Wilsonian adventure, Not only has it been consistent," but it has also proved fominently successtul_ In "keeping 'America' out of foreign ntanglements"—oh, the persistency of this! please! So much' cannot be said of British policy, Never since Wilson's European contretemps have we wil blessed such 9 pitiful debacle as the Eden-Hoare-Laval plan, and we fil 2 bewildered British government, desperately grasping at this straw or that, at this pact of that—le the intense mortification of is intimate allies. Of course, the failure of Britis policy J." closely bound up with the League's © fiasco, and aft his' spectacular defeat constant eration of adherence to the League Covenant and League commitments becomes totally meaningless.
But the failure of British policy becomes so much the more significant. 50 much tke more pathetic, when we are willy-nilly forced to conclude that the principal reason for failure ts To be found in British ability and unwillingness to recognize, concede or to admit the immense political and eeonomile power of the United Slates, once a fodgeling wpstart born out of the rebellious aspirations of a small band of ragaed, JSemi-savage colonials. Thus, the} British industrialist, the British irader or investor may not have realized, even at this late date, what it is] exactly that has struck them, but the weight of American power is steadily making itself felt. At the Naval Conerence now in session the Americans already seem to Rave taken the lead, the initiative and the responsibility, both as far os regards the merely {echnical programme as well 95.10" its political significance and Implte Mons. They had already. divorced Britain from an unholy and unnatural alliance and now, after four years of patient effort and labour, they have at last lined up the British: on a "common front™ out here in the Fa: ¥asi—a signal victory for American policy They say that money makes money. that power begets more! power. Whatever the truth, it guile plain that American money and American power will never be used {or the oppression of other and ker nations. This 1s precisely what makes the United Slates—and not the League or the British Empite—the realest power for beice in the world Britons talk indeed far too vacuously of "Anglo-American friendship" and "Anglo-American. cooperation," seeing that this friendship and' this ce-operation can be: had any moment and for the asking. but only on American terms and conditions. In the international poker game, among the hard and grim and often sordid realities of international rivalry, "the ties of blood and language" means no more than tween the money interests of Londo and their trans-Atlantic. rivals Which world ancial control Is. the stake and the currency systems China, for exaunple, and probably Ube economic dependence or independence of other nations sx well, are. the "pawns. To. all' appearances. this, Might will be" won by New. York. British bewilderment, the lure of policy, the League fiasey, Holy's defiance, the: defection of Germany and Japan, the ise of the Soviets—these are symptoms und the signs of the break-of the old European political and economic system of which Britain was the champion, the raging, the polities clouds still Unrewtening, the ff suffering and distress Is still pelting our faces, and the visibility Is poor. of state has foundered jo slurm-tossed. sous of inter= national polities. The powerfully built American craft seems to Hoo albeit in-need of constant attention and repair. One by one the nations of the world shall hive to clamber This mes reshaping or re-orientation of British policy. 1 means a funda: mental readjustment in the British point of view. It means that world Supremacy or world leadership is passing from one great nation to nother. In this there Is nothing new and on wrong, but in the case fof the British this process. without a doubt, will be accompanied by a great deal of rubbing of eyes and many a wistful reflection on what hasbeen. for what might have been, Shanghai, Feb. 17,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.