"A FORGOTTEN WAR."

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 234, 3 October 1931, Page 8

"A FORGOTTEN WAR."

This sentence occurs in an article entitled as a;bove, appearing in the Magazine Section of your paper: ."Judging from the experience of Miss Margaret Wilson in England few people in that country are aware that tie United States administered another sound thrashing to England in 1812." •It must be admitted that if Great Britain had put her naval and military forces on a proper footing in 1775 she could with 50,000 troops have brought the American War to a victorious termination 'by 1776. Indeed, the- Americans themselves almost lost the war, despite the fact that the British commanders, from selfish motives, desired to protract the war, by reason of the enormous profits with ■which, to them at least, the war was attended. Out of Napoleon's Berlin and Milan decrees, and the British counterblast, maritime issues arose. The Americans had during the long Napoleonic wars engrossed the bulk of the carrying trade of the globe, and had the strongest grounds for. ..complaint.; If the Americans had heen really animated by a desire in good faith to vindicate the rights of neutrals and restrain the oppression 'Of the belligerents, what they should have done waa to join in arms with Great Britain, in order to compel the French Emperor to a, more civilised method of warfare. ; That is, in fact, the policy they eventually adopted during the late war,. but in that case Germany was at fault. Favouring France, which had tried with the aid of Spain to cripple Britain during the War of Independence, and coveting Canada, the party in power in America in 1812 was bent on war with Great Britain. The taking the capital, Washington, was one of the most 'brilliant expeditions ever carried into execution by any nation,, but it is regrettable ■that British arms should have.been/guilty of needless destruction. Peace was concluded "between the United States and Great Britain at Ghent, the United States being in no condition to sustain -a war -.6ingly with Great Britain. That-this war, 1812-15, was bloody and. costly, 'but advantageous Britain, "and-that the- United- States'-Emerged upon the whole worsted in the fight, are matters about which there is no possible doubt. Neither the ostensible nor the real objects of the United States in engaging in the- conflict was attained. The real object was to wrest Canada from Great Britain, and in conjunction with Napoleon to extinguish Britain's maritime and colonial empires. America lost/ to Great Britain her position as carrier < for the world. WALTER S. LAXG.