BRITAIN & U.S.A.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 March 1939, Page 3

BRITAIN & U.S.A.

COMMON CHARACTERISTICS DEEP-SEATED ELEMENTS. THE IDEAL OF DEMOCRACY. If Mr Joseph Kennedy, American Ambassador in London, following the example of the American Ambassador in Bernard Shaw's play, “The Apple Cart,” applied for the admission of the United States to membership of the British Empire, Englishmen would undoubtedly be disturbed, because in spite of their great admiration for America and their sense of kinship they are not ready to be annexed, states R. A. Scot James in the “Christian Science Monitor.” It would be a great safeguard to Britain to belong to an Empire in which the United States was the predominant influence; but there is still a nationalism which cherishes its separateness and could not easily- adapt itself to double harness. Speaking at a dinner of the American Society in London, Mr Oliver Stanley, President of the British Board of Trade, refused to say all the polite things that are often said on ceremonial occasions. He recognised that he was walking on a road “slippery with the soft soap of generations of postprandial speakers.” He refused to talk glibly about a “common race,” since the United States had absorbed many millions of persons from non-British races; or about a “common history,” since there had been 200 years of separate history; or even about “common interests,” since the 3000 miles that separated the two countries could not be overlooked.

He found himself compelled to eliminate many-pious sentiments and many fallacies which tend to create an illusion of unity before he concluded in discovering, after all, “a-fundamental unity in a community of ideals which nothing could destroy.” These' he described as a' belief in the individual and his right to freedom and justice, a belief in social relationships based on tolerance and agreement, and a belief in peace. .Mr Kennedy in a speech which followed summed up the characteristics of American democracy. It recognises, he said, the inviolability and individuality, respects the rights of minorities, permits no interference with freedom of worship, insists on the impartial administration of the law, protects the weak against the strong, and while confirming citizens in the enjoyment of their rights requires them also to perform their duties. . . Now that might seem to be a. fair statement of the ideals of democracy in general, rather than of purely American democracy. Certainly it is exactly applicable to the ideal of British Democracy. But one must recognise also that much, of this doctrine would until recently have been accepted in theory by most civilised western countries, though today it is sharply at variance with the doctrines preached and practised in all the totalitarian States, Communist, National Socialist, or Fascist. But Britain and America are not merely alike in virtue of their democracy. What is far more fundamental is that these two countries have done more than all the rest of the world to form the conception of this democracy, and to make it wfiat it is in their own countries, inventing the model which has been copied elsewhere. Mr Stanley may lightly brush aside the community of history which cannot be neglected. ... The British constitution, which grew, differs very much from the United States constitution which was made. But both sprang from the same experience. First, they have both inherited the same fundamentals of law, which in essence were 200 years ago what they are today. The fair administration of law and acceptance of submission to law are deep-seated elements in British and American democracy, and are not affected by the fact that various new and different laws have been passed in the two countries, or that some lawless elements may have crept in. Then again, both have the same early religious history, which experienced the Reformation and the gradual assertion of sectarian rights and freedoms. Both have grown up to an acquaintance with and assimilation of the literature and precepts of the Bible, and to this must be attributed not only the stress on the rights of the

individual, but also that humanitarianism which is so conspicuous among the masses of the people in the United States and Britain. Again, the divine rights of kings, successfully contested by the English people in the Great Rebellion, was contested in America in the War of Independence.

The democracy of Great Britain and the United States and ifs distinctive humanitarian attributes have the same origins and became fixed in the character of the peoples before they drifted apart. In innumerable respects they have since become more and more different. But the fundamental qualities which count most for common action in international affairs and a common effort to preserve civilisation, are today conspicuously and powerfully present. Because that is so there is the basis for getting round obstancles to mutual trade, for making agreements, for understanding each other’s difficulties, and shaping policy broadly so that the two countries may pursue policies conducive to world peace and co-op-eration. It is certain that Great Britain and America cannot go to war. To what is that certitude due? To an understanding which must lead to more understanding.