LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 August 1919, Page 12

LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

AMERICA AND BRITAIN, ', In an interesting article in tlte Daily News, Major-General Sir P. Maurice plates interestingly ou the feeling of America towards Britain, as indicated in the discussions in the United States on the League of Nations Covenant. He writes:—

The .reports coming in from the United States of the discussions on the League of Nations have aroused deep anxiety in Great Britain, and not only amongst the many who regard the League as the only hope for the future. Almost every one among us, whettior ho believes in the efficacy of the qr noi, sees that the future of the >< depends greatly upon the relations between ourselves and the United Slates. Most of our responsible statesmen have laid, stress on this fact, and those who have been on official missions to the United States have spoken enthusiastically of the growth of good feeling for Great Britain among the American people and emphasised the vital importance of fostering it by all available means. '

We have, most of us, believed that the mutual understanding and comradeship developed out of our common effort against a common enemy had linked us indissolubly together, and it has therefore come as a real shock to find that a great deal of the old unfriendly criticism of Great Britain and things British still prevails. I do not believe thgt there is any cause for alarm provided 'we realise thai we have a great deal of leeway to make up and that a long past cannot be wiped out in a day. We have forgotten George 111. and the burning of.Washington, biit America has not, and we are far too apt to assume that because we have* nothing but friendship towards America the converse must be the case.

During my'travels in the States I meta considerable number of men who had gone out from England to the States as boys or as young men and have become American citizens. .They told Me that they had left home feeling that they were going to friends, and had been amazed on arrival to find the amount of prejudice which existed against England. The plain fact is that <b.D- majority of Americans" have been taught at school to regard. England as a bully and the natural enemy of American liberty. ' ■

Just as most of us were brought up on school histories which expiated on the wars of England and France, and told us, with a saving clause in the case of Jeanne d'Arc. that we were always right and the French always wrong, and that an Englishman could always beat a Frenchman; bo the American Bchoolboy has learned that England was 1 always wrong, and that an American can always whip an Englishman. This is well recognised by those responsible for Americas education.' Hmd a movement is on foot to revise American school history, and to present our case to young America in a fairer light. But it must take a very long time before this can have any real effect on American opinion, and it will not touch the large number of Americans whose historical education j ceases with their schooldays.' Nor can wc hope that the effect of the waf<qp4fc<> wa potent. in America in altering prfeconbpivc-1 ideas as it has, been in J&Qi&Z.st: M mq ; n regard »to France. 'America, never felt herself to be iii any real danger from Germany as we did, and there has been no tie of common adversity to knit us together.' Pershing's legendary "Lafayette, we'are heie!" represented the general feeling of the Amrican public that the American armies were coming to Europe to pay a debt to France and there was certainly no general anxiety to rush to our aid. The popular feeling was father that we had made a bad mess, of thingi, and that America was going to put them straight. At the time of our disasters in the spring of 1918 it .was a common joke amongst the American soldiers that the letters A.E.F. on their shoulders meant "America where England failed."

We should, therefore, remove from our minds any idea that America's action .in coming into the war at our side implied that the past was forgotten, and thai''we and all our ways would be welcomed with unqualified approval. If. wc start from that basis we can appreciate much better what the war Jw» -rfone, and is {.tilt doing to bring us together, and can discount more calmly any little ebullition of anti.-* British feeling in the United States. IJ we still live in the clouds and. do nothing to cultivate the crop ot friendship, which is growing very satisfactorily, we may find ourselves back where we were^

I believe that the silly talk which lias been heard amongst us that the next war will be between us and the United States and that America, far from having any sensational regard for our friendship, is set upon beating us in the world's markets by any means, fair or unfair, conies from those who did not realise the faots of American feeling for us, and were surprised when they discovered it,