CHANGE OF OUTLOOK

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 86, 8 October 1938, Page 8

CHANGE OF OUTLOOK

FINANCIAL WORLD

BRITAIN AND UNITED STATES

(From "The Post's" Representative.) NEW YORK, September 14.

Well-informed American travellers have noted in recent months a change of outlook in the United Kingdom towards the United States—a new orientation of ideas, in marked contrast to those hitherto held. To it is ascribed, in part, the determination of both branches of the English-speaking family to co-operate, by means of a reciprocal treaty and a closer liaison in the matter of-naval defence.

British and American economics are seen as becoming inter-dependent to a degree. One writer, Arthur. Krock, Washington correspondent of the "New York Times," observed that British preoccupation with what America is doing has reached its highest expression since Mr. Joseph Kennedy became Ambassador in London. "From time to time," he observes, "this preoccupation seems for days to erase consciousness of the war peril in Europe. While the British Government, perforce, never permits Germany, Italy, and Czechoslovakia to leave its mind, its members concur in The City's view of the controlling nature of American economics. To sense the dominance of the United States in the world, as well as to be re-awakened to the comparative host pf blessings we enjoy, in contrast to the circumstances of life elsewhere, only a brief sojourn is required. To reasonable and well-balanced critics the haste and extravagance-^~even the departures from tradition —of the New Deal soon take form as only minor gravities in the life of people." This observer quotes Mr. Kennedy as being convinced that, as he himself puts it, "if we sink, the British will sink first" What has amounted to an article of faith among American travellers is the belief that, as Mr. Krock states it, "the City of London, once the world's financial capital, seems meekly and finally to have become dependent on the economy and finance of the United States, and moves and thinks little without the American present and prospect as guides. The change is startling and complete. None denies, and everything asserts that, as this nation rises or falls in prosperity, so does Great Britain; that to the degree New Deal domestic policies affect the American economy, they are foreign policies, so far as the British are concerned. The first and last daily thoughts of the British broker, banker, industrialist, and economist are of New York and Washington. Most of those in the first three groups hang over the transatlantic ticker, and the economists fill the periodical and financial press with long, acute discussions of American finance and politics."