PACIFISM-AMERICAN STYLE

Hokitika Guardian, 5 August 1929, Page 1

PACIFISM-AMERICAN STYLE

(Auckland Star.)

In certain British and Continental hotels and restaurants special varieties of eatables and drinkables are labelled “ American style,” and when thus entitled are expected to exhibit those peculiar qualities of high flavour and pungency which are supposed to be associated with the American race. Today, it would appear, the Americans, presumably in the endeavour to- live up to their international reputation for “pep” and “vim,” are in many quarters discussing naval limitation in terms which suggest less a desire for world peace than a determination to alienate and exasperate other people; and this we suppose must account for the latest outburst on this question credited to Mr ’F. Britten, Chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives.

A week ago the British Prime Minister, as a proof of Britain’s sincere desire to check naval competition, announced that He had stopped the construction of certain cruisers for the time; Mr Hoover promised in return to suspend the construction of the cruisers for 1929. The President was immediately assailed in his own country by hostile critics, who maintained -that “naval parity” must be the first object, and pointed out that in any case the building of cruisers could not lie suspended without tijie authority of the Senate. But it was reserved for Mr Britten to win the palm in tins “peace talk, and style” competition by declaring that if Britain wants “ parity ” she must stop building cruisers till the Americans catch up, and if the Americans want “parity” they must go on building till Britain is tired. But Mr Britten seems to have surpassed himself in a more recent interview in which, not content with objecting to the suspension of cruiser construction, lfe deliberately chaiges Mr MacDonald with playing a dishonest trick on Mr Hoover and the Amei iaan people. The accusation that Mr Britten lias laid against the British Prime Minister amounts to this, that when he offered to stop the building of several British warships Mr. MacDonald knew that these were “merely mythical ships intended only for trading purposes” Mr Britten asserts that Britain had no intention of building these cruisers, that America has “grabbed tlie bait” and