UNITED STATES & EUROPE.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17863, 8 September 1923, Page 14

UNITED STATES & EUROPE.

POLICY OF NON-ENTANGLE-MENT.

LORD BIRKENHEAD'S VIEW.

(BT CABLE —PBZSS ASSOCIATION —COPYRIGHT.) (AUSTEALIAS AND K.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION.)

OTTAWA, September 6,

Mr Martin Conboy, of New York, addressing the Canadian Bar Association at Montreal, said tho United States was satisfied to live its own life, and would not meddle in Europe. Lord Birkenhead immediately followed, bluntly suggesting that that was what he said in New York in 1918 when he raised the fiercest turmoil in tho United States.

"Now it appears after all," he said, "that I was quite right. It is a bit late you know. We were very stupid when the great Peace Conference was on at Versailles. If we had only realised then that the United States intended to live its own life, we would have been ahead. If at Versailles W6 had known that the United States was to remain out, endless trouble in the world might have been spared. We should haive known and have been, prepared for what the States did with Armenia and what happened in Greece, and in that case the Ruhr crisis might have been avoided. What I am saying I am perfectly aware will raise a storm. lam prepared to back up my statement at any time, and in any country. Either the school of idealism which predated the last election in the United States is right or it is wrong. lam inclined to believe it is right." VANCOUVER, September 1. Because of what he terms "impudent references" to Mr Woodrow Wilson, the former President, made by Viscount Birkenhead in a speech at the Williamstown (Mass.) Institute of Politics, Mr Breckinridge, who was Assistant Secretary for War under Mr Wilson, has written to the President of the American Bar Association, protesting against Viscount, iJirkenhead's addressing the Association's annual convention. Viscount Birkenhead, in his speech, developed the theory that self-interest alone, and not altruism, woul'd determine America's attitude towards European problems. "While it seems that the name of Mr Wilson is revered," •he said, "by those who, render homage to purposes which are almost superhuman, it might be recognised that in the judgment of his countrymen he was wrong, and that by that error he became, paradoxically enough, the agent of all those post-war developments from .which his altruistio mind would have recoiled."