TRANS-ATLANTIC PARALLEL

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21206, 31 August 1940, Page 11 (Supplement)

TRANS-ATLANTIC PARALLEL

Britain and United States :: Similar Experiences

Livingston Hartley in Christian Science Monitor

\ LTHOUGH GREAT BRITAIN is the island heart of a far-flung Empire and the United States is a vast continental area, there are many parallels in their world positions. Both depend upon seapower for defence" and have made no effort in times of peace to maintain armies comparable to those of the other five Great Powers. Unless Britain can hold sea supremacy over her enemies, her Empire can be destroyed. Unless the United States can do likewise, the Monroe Doctrine can be defied. National policy in both English-speak-ing countries is directly dependent upon the support of public opinion, particularly in the case of positive measures to reduce the danger of war. There has long been in Great Britain a powerful public support for a policy of political isolation towards Europe. Fifty years ago, when no European Power actively endangered British security, “ Glorious Isolation ” was the accepted policy of the British Government. But after 1900, when the growing menace of Imperial Germany began to loom across the North Sea, Britain was compelled to sacrifice more and more of her political isolation. Its basis of unchallenged national security against Europe had been destroyed. The subsidence of the German menace in 1918 was followed by a resurgence of isolationist sentiment in Britain, sufficiently powerful to limit British commitments towards Europe within the League machinery and preclude, for twenty years, any definite guarantees towards Eastern Europe. It took the acute German menace in 1939 to impel her, at the eleventh hour, to give guarantees in Eastern Europe which, given earlier, might have insured peace. The United States, where political isolation from Europe has had far wider

support and a far firmer foundation of national security, also relinquished this policy under menace during the World War. After the war, an extreme reaction followed, and under Harding and Coolidge we were far more isolationist than under McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Taft. Now, as in the case of Britain, isolation may prove untenable. If the course of the war foreshadows a decisive German victory, we will either have to abandon this policy for greater support of the Allies, or see it turn from our grasp as an Allied defeat destroys Atlantic security and projects us into a two-ocean balance of power. Americans have widely condemned the policy of Britain during the Hitler years. Do we see, however, that our own policy has been basically parallel to hers and has Produced Two Similar Results ? One of these is the fading of foreign support, the other the prospect of having to take nine stitches because we did not take one. Great Britain had fifty nations with her in seeking to stop the assault upon Ethiopia, but only France at her side when Poland was attacked. We had most of the world on our side and a public promise that Britain would “keep in step” with us after Japan invaded China in 1937. But we shrank from a firm stand then, and now, if events force us to restrain Japanese aggression, no effective foreign support will be available. Great Britain could also have stopped Germany with relative ease during the occupation of the Rhineland in 1936. But she preferred to hope that no forceful action would be required, and is now compelled to make a maximum national effort. Our action has been parallel, toward both Japan and Germany. And now only an Allied victory seems likely to insure that this action will not, sooner or later, produce a similar result.