ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 101, 30 April 1898, Page 4 (Supplement)

ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

'The American has an enormous capacity for enthusiasm, but his enthusiasms are apt to be like brush fires—very hot and very brief. He Has no grand passions, he has many fads, he takes up a thing in a frenzy, and ia a brief season he has wearied of his fancy. His passion for baseball flows and ebbs like a tide, whist sweeps the land like a prairie tire, and then goes out, he mobs lan Maclaren to-day and mocks him to-morrow, he congests football fields in October and he abolishes the game by legislative enactment in Jamiary.

This is not mine own but a quotation iironi the 'Illustrated American,' and it comes to hand at a most opportune moment, to give pause to those ardent souls who because 'of' the cheering of 'God Save the Queen' and the Union Jack at New York theatres imagine that an alliance between the United States and vGreat Britain, which is much the same' thing as the 'Federation of English - speaking Peoples,' beloved of the G.O.M. of the Antipodes is within the pale of practical politics. It is not. It is an. axiom of American statesmanship that the United States shall avoid entering into any engagements with European Powers which might make America an active participant in the international squabbles of the older civilisations. Arid it must not be forgotten that the populations of the States are not all of one race and that they are not all well. disposed toward Great Britain. Indeed, so far as we on this side of"the Atlantic can judge, the ; sentiment of the vast number of Americans js the Very reverse of ProBritish. Certain American'*politicians have,, it is true, recently delivered teeimelfes of express!oM^cfftntiatiff'* to lead oiit; id believe that the noti^ii of an alliance with Great Britain is, the outcome of something more than a desire to be able to make use of the British navy in the event of ructions with Spain. But when that danger is'passed it is liberal odds on these same politicians relapsing into their favouiite amusement of 'twisting the lion's tail.'