THE PACIFIC ERA

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 49, 26 August 1933, Page 15

THE PACIFIC ERA

BRITAIN AND AMERICA

ANGLO-SAXON BONDS

"British-American co-operation—this and this alone is the path toI'■world reconstruction. Anglo-Saxon understanding and. the increasing realisation that we are men. of the same breed, and that our common heritage is 100 precious for us to endanger it by misunderstanding—here is the path to world peace and prosperity," said Dr. J. M. Kellems, an American evangelist and journalist, who, with Mrs. Kellems, is at present visiting New Zealand, in an address to members of the Optimists Club at the V.M.C.A. It was high time, said Dr. Kellems, that English-speaking men around the World; and especially those living on the shores of tho Pacific, should do some very straight thinking. Prophetic nieu had long talked about the Pacific era and had envisaged that time •when the great movements of world civilisation would centre in the Pacific. New empires would arise around, this greatest of all oceans and with their rise ■would come momentous problems for the Anglo-Saxon Tace. That seemingly fantastic prophecy had come to its day of fulfilment, and the problems of which the prophets had so often given "warning were confronting the AngloSaxon people nowi The day had come for English-speaking people, with the same resolution that had built up the British. Empire and had brought into being the great Republic of the West, clear-headedly to' face those problems. In a quarter of a century China had changed more than in tho two thousand years •which preceded her modern revolution. The rise of Japan was the national miracle, of a hundred years; her population'was increasing at so great a rate that her islands were no longer able to sustain her teeming millions. More than any other nations, Great Britain and the United States had been responsible for the surge of the Japanese ' spirit, for the -influence of western life, especially in the economic world, had not been unheeded by those progressive and energetic people of the East. They had- indeed been apt students and were boldly walking in the footsteps of the West. THINK AND WORK TOGETHER. "But in- the problems of the Pacific," said Dr. Kellems, "there need be no threat of war; Those problems can be resolved into harmony, if AngloSaxon people bring themselves to think together and to co-operate as AngloSaxons. I have preached this gospel in tho United States and in the British Empire for a quarter of a century. Let us understand each other. Let us have •the will to look with kindly tolerance upon each other's weaknesses, let us praise each other's virtues. Here is a league of nations -which will endure because it is a league of the spirit, and after all the groat spiritual bonds are the strongest. Scraps of paper can very easily be torn to bits, but the things of the spirit endure. The constituent parts of your own great Empire are not bound together by words' of solemn agreement. They are bound into unity by unbreakable spiritual bonds, language, laws, literature/religion, and British ideals. And in these things we of the United States, are' still, thank God, children of the same great mother which gave you birth. British-American co-operation—this- and this alone is the path to world reconstruction.