MUTUAL DISCOVERY

Hokitika Guardian, 26 August 1925, Page 1

MUTUAL DISCOVERY

An appeal for the cultivation ot friendly relations between Ttritain and the United States is made by Air \\ ietcham Stead in the first number of a now fortnightly Brit ish-American. “There is only one way, AI me Englishmen, more Britons, have to discover the t luted States, and more Americans have to discover Circat Britain, says Alt Stead. “Discovery soon brings out the fundamental fact that (he people of the Fnited Stale- are not ‘cousins’ of the English. hut are a great, independent. foreign nation, tally groan up. wealthy and powerful, with an outlook and interests of their own widely different' from the outlook and interests of Britons and wholly proof against tin* preoccupations which the neighbourhood ot a distressful F, it rope intliets upon the inhabitants ol Crest Brtain. A further fact, which has to he experienced to he understood, is that by far the greater nuinher of Americans live for four or live months of the year in a semi-tropical climate, and the whole of the year in latitudes which, in Europe, would correspond to the region between the Pyrenees and Morocco. Thus a race—for the Americans are a race—still mainly descended from Northern Europe stocks, has developed and is developing under the influence of warmth and sunlight. This warmth and this sunlight stimulate clearness and rapidity of thought and openness of speech—qualities not encouraged bv the climate of Great Britain. At the same time, the comparative sparseness of population in the United States, the freedom from foreign political risk, and the uniformity of institutions, tenif to produce a simplicity of mind and ft lack of subtlety such 'as are hardly to he found m Europe. These and many other things have to be discovered by Britons liolore thev can begin to understand America, and Americans have quite as much to learn before they understand Eng-