AMERICAN OUTLOOK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 August 1938, Page 3

AMERICAN OUTLOOK

The fundamental fact about America’s attitude to Europe is one which Englishmen often ignore, writes Professor E. H. Carr, professor of international politics in the University of Wales, in a letter to the “Sunday Times.” Nearly every American today believes that the United States made one of the-worst bunders of their history when they came into the war. Thanks to the depression, this conviction has grown in intensity with the years. When the Englishman looks back to the golden age before 1914, he thinks of the war as an act of God which he was powerless to prevent. The American, in a similar mood, thinks of the war as an act of folly which he is determined not to repeat. In short, American foreign policy now rests on a solid rock-bottom of national interest. But here Japan and Germany (Italy is lumped in with them, but hardly .counts) have obliged by creating a threat to American interests which cannot be ignored. Rumours of Japanese concessions in Mexico, the capture by Germany of Brazilian and Chilean trade, Fascist and Nazi propaganda (mainly by radio) throughout Latin America, Nazi organisations in the United States—all these things lend point to the news about Austria or Czechoslovakia, and provide a background for the German spy case in New York and the unusual publicity which the authorities are giving to it. The potential national interest of the United States in any major war involving Japan or -Germany is enormous But Americans —here, too, so like Englishmen—love to talk idealism while acting realism.