Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, 1940. CANADA’S EXPANDING PART.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, 1940. CANADA’S EXPANDING PART.

AN agreement between the United States and Canada to set up a permanent joint defence board, which “will consider in a broad sense the defence of the northern half of the AX estern Hemisphere,” is an event of historic importance and significance. All the more since the United States is at present discussing with Great Britain the acquisition or leasing of naval and air bases in British possessions in the .Western Hemisphere, the agreement reached by President Roosevelt and the Canadian Prime Alinister (Air Mackenzie King) no doubt may be regarded not only as locally important, but as a forward step in international relationships and one that opens the way to further co-operation in establishing safeguards against aggression. In the United States there has been, of late, a certain amount of discussion on the subject of future relations between that country and Canada. Some Americans, looking ahead, have asked how far the excellent existing understanding between their own. Republic and the great northern Dominion may be affected by the outcome of the present war. In an article in “Current History,” for example, Mr John MacCormac considers several “possible situations” which seem, he says, to be envisaged in the American official mind.

' One of these situations is that which would arise in the event of Britain being decisively defeated. That, Mr MacCormac observes, “would almost automatically result in Canada’s independence under American auspices.” No doubt he is right. If Britain were unable to withstand the onset of Nazi barbarism, the United States would at once be called upon, fully as much for its own sake as for that of Canada or any other division of the Americas, to bestir itself in an unyielding enforcement and defence of the Monroe Doctrine. More interest attaches, however, to another possibility considered by Mr MacCormac—that Britain, achieving decisive victory, may yet elect, as a result of war experience, to base her Empire in the Western Hemisphere.

Leaving the United Kingdom as a garrisoned outpost to command Europe’s sea exits and entrances, the American writer suggests, Britain might

pursue her imperial designs from Canada and thus continue her influence on the world. It is freely admitted in Washington (he adds) that this would create a new problem in Canadian-Ameri-can relations. Only if British and American policies were closely co-ordinated would the American public, it is thought, view such a situation without alarm. Such close co-ordination would have to involve agreement among the English-speaking peoples about the sort of world they wanted and the methods which could be used to achieve it. . . .

What Mr MacCormac here presents as a possible development no doubt must be classed as in any limited range of time impossible. A comprehensive and full-powered transfer of the base of an Empire from one side of an ocean to the other obviously is incapable of being accomplished very rapidly. Mr MacCormac ’s speculation none the less is of some interest for the reason that the situation he envisages, although it evidently cannot arise at short notice, is almost certain to be approached in some degree in the process of gradual evolution. As time goes on, that is to say, Canada, in common with the other selfgoverning Dominions, must be expected to take progressively an increasingly important part and place in the Empire partnership.

Whether, however, that fact in itself raises any separate and self-contained problem of international relationship may be doubled. Agreement among the English-speaking peoples about the kind of world they want and the methods which may be used to achieve it is demanded, not merely in order that the present, good relations between the United States and Canada may continue, but as a vital condition of the future security of world democracy—that of the United States as much as anv.

No question is ever likely to arise between the United States and Canada, or would he likely Io arise even if Canada became the centre and headquarters of the British Empire, that would compare remotely with the issue at stake in the present war and which will have to be determined 'when the war is over. It is now being perceived ever more clearly by the American people that the Western Hemisphere, as well as democracy in Europe, is menaced by the forces of evil which Britain and her Empire partners are now resisting almost alone. 11 is perhaps not yet perceived by the people of the United States to anything like the same degree that the future security of all democracies will depend upon their taking common and united action in good time against any attack that may be made or attempted on their freedom. That commanding truth must be recognised sooner or later, however, if democracy is to endure even in the Western'Hemisphere.