HELP FROM UNITED STATES

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23300, 9 April 1941, Page 3

HELP FROM UNITED STATES

_—4 CHANGED INTERNATIONAL VIEW "The prerequisite to world stability is world security and only Great Britain and the United States of America, acting in concert, can give us that.” This statement was made by Mr J, H. Kemnitz, of Oamaru, in an address he gave to the Christchurch Rotary Club at its lunch at Beath’s yesterday. Mr Kemnitz spoke- of British-American cooperation. ; The address giyen by Mr Kemmtz was in the main a summary of the changes in the attitude of the people of the United States towards international problems, and towards the advancing menace of the anti-democratic regimes. He spent some months in the United States in 1937 and then, he said, found acute industrial unrest and isolationism in full cry. That isolationism had then been deeply ingrained in the spirit of the people of the States. Tracing the change in the outlook of Americans, Mr Kemnitz claimed that Anglo-American co-operation had not been assisted by some of Great Britain’s diplomats. He considered that Sir Ronald Lindsay and Mr Duff Cooper had not helped the cause. Year after year, since 1918, Americans had been inculcated with the opinion that their sacrifices during the war had been in vain. Mr Roosevelt, internationallyminded, had helped materially to change that outlook. So had Mr Cordell Hull, Mr Roosevelt’s Secretary of State. In that respect they had done a tremendous job: Mr Kemnitz said that British fortitude after the outbreak of war had done more than any other factor to change the American view about the prospects of the struggle. There had been criticism of Lord Halifax in the United States, because he had been an appeaser, but he felt that Lord Halifax generally was the embodiment of the ideals inspiring the British Empire in its titanic struggle.