THE OUTSIDER'S VIEW.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 311, 12 November 1910, Page 3

THE OUTSIDER'S VIEW.

Some interesting impressions of Great Britain were given in the speeches delivered at the annual dinner of the Atlantic Union in London last month. An American lady spoke of the increasing haste and pressure of London life. Even the London policeman, she had found, seemed to have less time than formerly to act as the guide, philosopher and friend of the bewildered visitor. An American merchant said that he regarded London as the epitome of all the lights and shades of modern civilisation and the consummation of a thousand years of human evolution all focussed in one dazzling point. He wag greatly_im-' pressed also by the healthy, insidious and unspent force with which Britain was permeating and "anglicising" the more distant parts of the earth. If the English - speaking communities would support one another they could ensure the peace of the world. A South African mentioned the high standard of political morality prevailing in Britain and said that he could see no sign of decadence cr of stagnation. A California!! college professor referred to the rumours of ill-feeling between Britain and Germany. He said that he failed entirely to see why people in the United Kingdom should regard as inevitable a conflict with Germany, which had very little to gain and very much to lo'e by going to war with the greatest naval Power. "If Germany did go to war," he remarked, "she would not only have the Britons from overseas and the people of British origin in the United States flocking to the standard of the Mother Country, but Russia, France and the various little kingdoms by which she is surrounded rising up against her. In such circumstances as these surely it must be to the interest of Germany to maintain friendly relations wtih the Anglo-Saxon race." There is a good deal to be said in support of this view of. the situation.