Practical and concrete ce-operation between the British and American authorities in China is a feature of the present situation. Surprise may therefore be felt here that, in London and Washington, discussion of joint Anglo-American action is framed in the interrogative. The close contacts of the naval and military forces of the two countries receive daily illustration in Shanghai. One of the three Shanghais—the International Settlement—is actually being governed by. a Council with an American Chairman who has a British Vice-Chairman as well as another American and four more British colleagues. The administration under their control reflects a similar international concord. Nor is there any reason to doubt that the relations between the diplomatic representatives of the two countries on the spot are any less harmonious, London and Washington, however, have to consider political factors which are but dimly perceived from this distance. Mr, Cordell Hull has to keep iry mind not merely the situation in China but the effect on American opinion of any diplomatic action which might appear to link up Washington's policy with the confused state of affairs in Europe. So he naturally repudiates any intention of leaning on Great Britain and he is not inclined to advise President Roosevelt to take any step which could be interpreted in that sense. It is useless for British critics to argue that such fears are unjustified. An American Government, like any democratic government elsewhere, has to keep its ear to the ground and certain political traditions which somehow or other breed distrust of British diplomacy cannot be ignored. It would be fatal if Anglo-American unity became a plant of forced growth. Wisdom is shown both in Washington and London in endeavouring to let it grow of its own virility and in cultivating it more by tacit agreement than explicit prescription. may at times provoke impatience when it seems that so much could be done b; t exhibition of joint accord, but by preserving individual freedom of action the two countries give all the more emphasis to their common outlook when it happens to assert itself spontaneously.
Nevertheless criticism may be proper: directed against those arguments which, either in London or Washington, affect to block the way to cooperation merely by citing past, experience. The suggestion that Mr, Cordell Hull will not "permit Great Britain to forget that she failed to support the Stimson policy in Manchuria" is surely both sweeping and illogical. Mr, Hull is not likely to get so far away from the actualities on the State Department files. If every nation, to use the Lancashire expression, "carried a stone in its pocket", the cause of cooperation would indeed be in Many British commentators have firmly pressed the opinion that Sir j John Simon was not the best man to have at the Foreign Office when the Manchurian was developing. It must b> remembered, however, that the actual holder of the portfolio when the Mukden "incident" set rolling the ball which was to have so catastrophic influence on the League of Nation's power for peace-constr: ction, was the late Marquis of Reading and Sir John Simon did not take office until the General Election had given formal approval to the National Government which reconstructed its cabinet from November 1931—six weeks after the Sino-Japanese clash. Lord Reading had therefore to bear some responsibility for the failure to bring speedy pressure on Japan in the early stages of the affair. Yet it is quite incorrect to suggest that Mr. H. L. Stimson's criticism of the British Foreign Office bears on that period. Indeed he expressly has dissented from that view. Moreover he makes it clear that the League, enjoying for the first time, American cooperation, could not have had "during those early months the same American cooperation in the use of sanctions". He himself relied on the influence of moderates in Japan and, later, on the effect of international condemnation and the policy of non-recognition of conquest contrary to treaty. In short, for whatever delay may have incurred the rightful criticism of wisdom after the event, Great Britain wa no more to be censured than other countries.
The gravamen of Mr. Si 's charge against British policy was in respect of the lack of response given to his memorandum of January 7, 1932, "the most signal effort by our own government". Stimson "to carry out that pledge (acceptance of the Kellogg-Briand Pact)". He expected sympathy from London. He did not get it and there Sir John Simon has to bear the responsibility. Mr. Stimson's disappointment was acute but he did not go as far as a recent message from Washington has done in criticizing the Foreign Office's de: He has written: while deeply regretting the division of policy, we were not uncharitably disposed in our acceptance of it at the time. We were well aware of the great national strain which had enveloped Great Britain ever since the change in her government in September and which rendered it an especially difficult time in which to follow a difficult policy. We also fully appreciated the natural ties of sentiment and gratitude which had resulted from the former Anglo-Japanese alliance. Moreover, as a former administrator in the Far East, I Was well acquainted with the attitude of mind towards China which had been reflected in the editorial of the London "Times". It was the typical attitude of the "Old Timer" (Old China Hand)
Looking back over the lustrum which has since passed it is instructive to note the accuracy of Mr. Stimson's conclusion that the British Government had allowed itself to be too strongly influenced by the "City" which $82) was taking its cue from the Old China Hand, as everyone now admits.
However, the Old China Hand, with the exception of a few sea green incorruptibles, has changed his tune and the only value of recalling the diplomatic passages of those days is to show that they did not create such resentment at Washington as to make the American Government distrustful of Great Britain, They should not be used for that purpose now. If there is to be any Anglo-American ce-operation it must be based on the free and frank examination of facts as they are and not on a sense of pique on the one side or the other because of past diver-genees of view. It is far better to avoid precise declarations at the centre owing to the danger of their meeting with political interpretations which would prove embarrassing to the domestic security of the respective administrations. When, as in China to-day, British and American citizens and the official representatives of their Governments are working hand in hand by the mere process of seeing the situation through the same glasses there is no need to force the pace. On the larger issues which are necessarily obscured to observers here by the present local crisis, there is every reason to be confident that the inexorable facts of international policy will of themselves develop an increasing solidarity of Anglo-Saxon effort. Great Britain has to bear her share of the blame for the breakdown in the collective system and the consequent perplexities which have afflicted America no less than Europe, but she has vindicated her claim to be a contributor to the remedial processes now at work by virtue of the firmness of her policy to-day. Undeflected from her abiding faith in the ultimate success of the doctrine of international cooperation, she is putting herself and, therefore, her friends in a stronger position to uphold those views. On those lines American opinion is gradually developing and automatically will produce an Anglo-American unity which will require no solicitous probing for evidence of its reality, even if it has to dispense with formal symbols or diplomatic abracadabra.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.