Lying To America

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 125, 14 November 1941, Page 4

Lying To America

N a sensationally outspoken address last week in Canada, Mr. Herbert Agar, a leading United States editor, called on the British to cease "lying to the United States" if they wished to win the war. By lying he meant pretending-cracking too hardy, holding chins too high, denying that © they were really in peril when the earth was cracking under their feet. Beyond a certain point, Mr. Agar argued, this was playing straight into Hitler's hands. The war could not be won without America, and Americans would never join in while Britain seemed safe. On the day on which that warning was uttered Germany divided the Russian armies in the Crimea, and General Wavell made a public pronouncement on the defences of the north-west frontier of India. In other words it was made clear to those who had eyes to see that the British Empire as well as Russia might soon be in the gravest peril. But it has not even been hinted yet that the Government or people of the United Kingdom feel undue alarm. The situation will of course have been discussed privately with Washington. There can be no such thing any longer as reticence between the Governments of the two great democracies. But a democracy is a state in which action comes from the minds and wills of private individuals. Mr. Roosevelt can never be more than a thought or two ahead of Congress, and Congress no more than a debate or two ahead of the American people. America comes in or stays out on the decision, not of Washington, but of the farmers, planters, manufacturers and labourers represented in Washington. It is to those people, Mr. Agar now declares, that the truth must at once be told. They must know, not merely what dangers threaten the British, but in what peril they stand themselves, and pride has so far combined with prudence to keep the truth away from them. In our anxiety not to. tell the Americans that they ought to be in we are denying strenuously that we need them. And now we have this blunt intimation from the Americans themselves that if we are too proud td tell the truth we had better prepare for the consequences, .