Gladstone and the U.S. A.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 24 February 1917, Page 3

Gladstone and the U.S. A.

A HASTY PRONOUNCEMENT REGRETTED. A writer in the Lennox Herald (Scotland) says that it is interesting to recall the circumstances of the American Civil War, when Lancashire bore without complaining greater hardships than the present war has forced npon America. At that time, too, when the war seemed bound to end in a deadlock, if not in victory, for the south, the northern States decided that civilisation was at stake, and that the north must fight on. MrGladstone, speaking at Newcastle in 18i)4, spoke of the south as having "created a nation," and this statement was interpreted as that its independence would he recognised by this country. That was, of course, a miscalculation; ibut Mr. Gladstone's words nearly thirty years after are worth quoting: "I really, though most strangely, believed that it was an act of friendliness to all | America to recognise that the struggle was virtually at an end. That my opinion was founded upou a- false estimate of the facts was the very least part of my fault. I did not perceive the gross impropriety of such an utterance from a Cabinet Minister of a Power allied in blood and language and bound to loyal neutrality." He added that the case was "further exaggerated 'by the fact that we, were already, so to speak, under indictment before the world for not (as was alleged) having strictly enforced the laws of neutrality in the matter of cruisers."