UNITED STATES AND WAR

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21194, 17 August 1940, Page 11 (Supplement)

UNITED STATES AND WAR

British Misunderstanding :: A Frank Critic

(Kichard W. Graves, Associate Editor of I ARGE MEASURE of the current English attitude towards the United States seems to be due to the inability of the average Englishman to realise that the United States, for all its bond of language, is not a British nation. Its language, its legal traditions, a great deal of its civilisation, and much of the best in its national character are British, to be sure; but it is an amalgam of all Europe, and of much that is not even European. Even my own city of Pittsburgh, with its solid substratum of Scotch and English, is a Bewildering Congeries of Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Welsh, Jewish, and Negro. Now obviously a nation so composed is not going to think in the same way as one ot exclusively British blood and background. The truly remarkable thing is that all y these people—some of them only one or I two removes from the Old Country—have demonstrated their ability to live together successfully, co-operativeiy, and, for the most part, amicably. But it means that America is something rather unique in the world; it cannot be understood on the basis of any other national experience; it i - something greater than the sum of all its parts. And its attitudes and reactions are not always predictable. One thing Is sure: all these various blood-strains make their contribution to our way of thinking and acting. Most of our people came to this country to escape from Europe. They wanted to put 3000 miles of ocean between them and the class distinctions, autocracies, military services, and economic dead-ends of continental Europe. They do not look back with any sentimental attachment to Europe. That is true for the most part even of those Americans oi British blood. The result of all this is that most Americans have Little Love for England. I am putting this with unpleasant frankness, perhaps, but in the interest of understanding it ought to be said. Let me say this by way of confirmation. I have rather wide contacts with fairly intelligent middle-class people through my work as an editor for a Presbyterian publishing house and a minister in a Church whose tradition is entirely that of Scotland and Ulster; and I can say freely that I almost never meet an individual who reveals genuine warm-hearted affection for England as a political unit or for the British Empire. We rejoice in our common heritage of English literature, we read with enjoyment English novels, we love our Dickens and our Scott, and those of us who have visited England have delighted in its countryside. But the political England, and the political Empire, we do not love at all. Our attitude is much

Presbyterian Board of Publication, U.S.A.) more likely to be one of cynicism and suspicion. We find it rather difficult, for the most part, to like English people. One of the things that unquestionably serves to irritate us with the English is their assumption that we are, after all, a sort of British colony on a large scale, bound by the very nature of things to take the same view that England does. Almost without a single exception we loathe all that Germany under the present Nazi Government stands for. I am sure that that loathing is just as deep-seated and vigorous as it is in England. All of us hope the Allies will win this war. We dc not like to think what Europe would be like under complete Nazi domination. But there are so many of us who honestly feel that we can do more for future World Sanity and Civilisation by striving desperately to preserve intact over here the form and spirit of democracy. We are not yet convinced that the Allies cannot win the war without our help. I think if we really came to the conclusion that the Allies’ cause was lost without our participation in the war we should revise our attitude and go in—but not until we were sure that the cause was desperate without us. For, much as we prefer the British and French philosophies of life and government to the German, we cannot yet escape the feeling that at the present stage the war is still much more a struggle for empire than it is a crusade for or against certain ideologies. There is an almost universal feeling over here that the British Empire is much larger than it has any right to be. Moreover, the American sense of humour—a perverse sense, if you like—is stirred by England’s insistent claim to be the protector of small nations. We think of Abyssinia, of Albania, of Czechoslovakia, of Austria, of the Baltic States, of Poland, of Finland. We think farther back and remember China and how British policy Completely Abandoned Co-operation with the United States in 1931, when Japan began her Manchurian conquest, cooperation calling for joint action in making that conquest impossible. You may have a ready and an adequate answer for every one of these matters, and our criticisms may be entirely illogical and gratuitous. Nevertheless, there it is. I am merely trying to convey to you something of the American state of mind. I hope you will not consider this an unfriendly article. It is not meant to be that at all. I am sure that most Americans who think about the matter at all covet happier relations with the English. It does not help to discern a rising tide of rather scornful criticism of us in the expression of English opinion.