Evening Post. FRIDAY, JULY 19, 1918. A BETTER UNDERSTANDING

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 17, 19 July 1918, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, JULY 19, 1918. A BETTER UNDERSTANDING

It is bo late in the day to bo reporting a Fourth of July celebration that it seems safe to assume that the speech of Lord Reading, • which was ascribed to that occasion by a New York message yesterday, was really delivered on the great French, anniversary. But, whatever the occasion may have been, Lord Reading's testimony to the unbreakable spirit of France and his forecast of the blessings that her alliance with Britain and the United States may be expected to confer upon the world were apt and timely. " It is difficult," he said, "to overestimate the effect that this alliance will have upon the progress of humanity and the peace lof the world. The war is a struggle between two conceptions of the rights of man—between democracy and despotism." Talk of this kind would have- been equally appropriate to the 4th or to the 14th July, or, we may add, to the 3rd June. The time has passed, let us hope for ever, when any sensible man can see any conflict or inconsistency between the essential aims of either, French or American republicanism and British monarchy. During the present month, both in the United. States and in France, the British Ambassador has been able to join in the celebration of the national anniversaries without hypocrisy and without reserve, and in each case he has been by no means the least welcome guest. Regardless of the quarrels of the past, and of present differences in their forms of government, the three great democratic Powers stand side by side against a common peril. The British at Amiens and the Americans at Chateau Thierry are protecting not merely France, but Britain, America., and the whole world, against the greatest danger with which humanity was ever threatened, and French gallantry is at the same time protecting ,Loridon and New York, Ottawa and Wellington; just as surely as it is protecting Paris.

The comradeship in arms thus forced upon the nations which stand for democracy and deoency is indeed the redeeming feature of the calamity which has now pvershadowed the world for nearly four years. If this comradeship in arms is followed by a permanent comradeship in peace, the impartial eye of the historian of the twenty-first century may be able to find in'the most terrible and far-reaching of calamities the source of even greater blessings to humanity. The darkening of the skies in anticipation of the storm that is now raging had already brought France and Britain close together, ' but what but the storm itself could ( have called America from her isolation, cleared the scales of provincialism from her eyes, enlarged her Monroe Doctrine into an emancipation decree for tho whole world, and associated her Independence Day with the independence of mankind ? The new school of American historians had previously pleaded for a broader outlook, a truer perspective, a closer " interchange of theory and practice," which would shape the nation's future policy to greater advantage by a better understanding of its past. In his valuable little monograph, " A Heritage of Freedom: or the Political Ideals of the English-speaking Peoples," to which we have previously acknowledged our obligations, Mr. Matthew P. Andrews thus states the narrowing effect of the traditional popular conception of the origin of American liberty:

' "Much of tho earlier Amorican history," ho writes, " from which w© havo drawn our impressions of tho revolutionary conflict and of events of international importance sinco that period has not been consciously partisan, but it has been based on evidence, in a double sense, partial. The result has given tho American people a somewhat provincial viewpoint, which easily becomes, under the expanding influence of a. certain kind of patriotic teaching or of 'Fourth of July oratory,' very largely Chauvisnistic, or, in more popular phraseology, good American 'buncombe.' " America's entry into the great war has crowned the work of Mr. Andrews and his coadjutors with a success for which they might otherwise have had years to wait. A Fourth of July oratory in which the friends of liberty all over the world can join with equal fervour leaves little room, for the parochialism which is equally inimical to scientific history and sound statesmanship. American democracy has now made the whole world its province.

The aim of Mr. Andrews's book may be said to be to show that the aims and ideals of the two great branches of the English-speaking peoples are essentially the same, that the conflict which led to their separation and temporary estrangement was not a conflict between people and people, and that even when shJShas been least aware of it the liberty of America has been under overwhelming obligations to the power of Britain. Aa to the great breach which is celebrated on the Fourth of July, " the historian of to-day shows," says Mr. Andrews, " how the separation of the two great branches of the English-speaking peoples was the result of an armed conflict between the then autocratic and unpopular Government of Great Britain, under George HI., on the one side, and an active patriot party, representing about a third of the people of the British colonies in America, on the other." The American revolutionaries had really done almost as much for British democracy as for their own, for the friends of freedom in both countries recognised in the •autocracy of George 111. and his Ministers a common enemy. But this service to British liberty wjis, aa Mr. Andrews shows, fully repaid. In spite of chronic distrust, varied by one period of open warfare, " it is easily demonstrable," says Mr. Andrews, " that for a period of one hundred years the increasingly Liberal British Government has been the most poworful external support of PanAmerican democracy."

Ifc is quite in accordance with this traditional distrust that an American author should have recently published a small volume, on -' Breaches of Anglo-American :.fcr»U«." -"Tha Jwufc," wys Mr.

Andrews, "is based on fact; and, if it wers the whole truth, it would indicate that there has been little good faith and much sharp dealing between the Englishspeaking democracies aa representatives of the most highly developed and powerful types of governments of the people, by the people, and for the people." But when the whole truth is told, it is proved beyond dispute that " of all Governments the British and the American constitute those that have been most in direct contact, and yet have most successfully lived together, if not always in perfect amity, at least in a beneficent state of international peace." The most striking testimony to this success is the three thousand miles of frontier between Canada and the United States, not protected or threatened by a single fort, or a single battleship on any of the Great Lakes. In his rapid survey of the differences which have arisen from time to time to mar this harmony, Mr. Andrews writes with a candour which neither exaggerates nor extenuates the faults of either side. In this description of the causes which brought American democracy into Una with the most dangerous despotism that ever threatened the liberty of Europe before that of Wilhelm 11., who could guess the nationality of the writer from the perfect impartiality of his judgment?:—

" In i America, historical prejudices and misconceptions, aggravated by ultrapatriotic teachings, had already played their part in obscuring the greater issues; but tactless obstinacy on the part of the British Ministry and arrogant aggression on the part of British naval officers contributed in forcing the peacefully inclined American Government into an unnatural and unnecessary war which, had the American Republio been stronger, might have enabled the autocratic Napoleon to carry put his designs against the freedom of nations."

Mr. Andrews rejoices that American democracy finds itself in no such equivocal position to-day. He recognises that a challenge to the democracies of all the world has swept away both the political misunderstandings between the two great English-speaking peoples and the historical misconceptions which he declares to bo equally dangerous to the peace of nations. The dealing up of this mutual distrust gives freedom the promise of success against a. danger by • which it might otherwise have been overwhelmed. " In view of the world-conflict between tho forces of autocracy and democracy to-day," says Mr. Andrews in his concluding sentence, '' we begin to realise for the first tinje that had a mere traditional distrust, engendered by historical misconceptions, fanned Anglo-American political differences into a douhly disastrous conflict, government of the people, by the people, and for the people might indeed have perished from the earth."