Evening Post. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1918. AMERICA AND "BRITAIN'S DAY"

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 140, 10 December 1918, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1918. AMERICA AND "BRITAIN'S DAY"

On the 4th July last the' anniversary of America's independence was celebrated with enthusiasm throughout the British Empire, and with special enthusiasm in Britain itself—the Mother Country of whose sovereignty her Declaration of Independence marked the final renuncia-' tion. America has. now returned the compliment. Britain's Day has been celebrated throughout the United States with a fervour which probably no Fourth of July demonstration has ever surpassed. The common danger which brought the two countries into line and gave to the last Independence Day a world-wide significance has dwarfed the minor, differences, which have kept them apart for nearly a'century and a-half, and given to community of speech, of ideals, and of outlook its due force as a bond of union. Under the stress of war the things that are essential and permanent have put the accidental and evanescent causes of difference in their ptoper place, and in the hour of a common triumph, which would have been a common disaster if the old aloofness had persisted, both the long-aun&ered branches of the Englishspeaking peoples can see that the union "which the war has. enforced must be maintained if the fruits of their victory are to be permanent. The American people are traditionally opposed to alliances. The tradition has survived the havoc which the experience of the last two years has wrought upon other traditions which were once as firmly established. "The war," said the Baltimore American while American soldiers were still fighting shoulder to shoulder with the French on the Marne, "has so completely upset the geographies that now America stands between Germany and Paris." 1 But despite this geographical revolution, it was not as the ally of France or Britain that America took her new position on the map. She was there, however, and if it was in pursuance of a " gentleman's agreement" rather than of an alliance that she came to save Paris and civilisation, we need not worry about words. What America has done she may. be relied upon to do again, regardless of formula;, should the necessity recur. But the lesson seems likely to be so fully mastered by all concerned that a recurrence should be impossible. iv J Addressing the American Officers' Club 1 in London at the beginning of October, Mr. Walter Long recalled a prophecy of the late Mr. Choate which is remarkable as illustrating both the antagonism of tlia most pro-British of Americans to the j idea of an alliance and the confidence j with ivhirb the.y nsvMfchirfess looked lw< wild to what ft.dMer. unity, thw tH&ii

of most alliances has now accomplished. Mr. Long quoted Mr. Ohoate as saying to him in the conrse of a conversation in New York :

I am quite confident that there will never be we call an alliance between us and England; it is contrary to our traditions; but yon may rely upon it that if ever—which God forbid —England finds herself in a real difficulty, my countrymen will come to her aid and stand by her to the end.

What America has now done without any alliance has nobly fulfilled this prophecy, and ■ in the presence of the achievement -which she has helped to consummate we feel the full force of the words with which, on her entry into the fray, Sir James Barrio welcomed the spectacle of " the two great Englishspeaking communities at last fighting together for a common cause linked together in a great crnsade of humanity against inhumanity." "Why, it is greater than the war itself," he said.

On Britain's Day in the United States it was mainly on the British share in the groat triumph that attention was concentrated. The British people, as the Philadelphia Ledger recently observed, aTe but poor advertisers of their own wares. The national habit of self-depre-ciation has frequently obscured from friend and foe alike the magnitude of their achievement. While Germany's megaphone was proclaiming to the world the marvels of her military and her industrial triumphs, -the candour . with which Britain's shortcomings were proclaimed by her own press and lier own public men was accepted by the Germans as a sign of weakness, and* what was more unfortunate, they were even so regarded by many of her friends in France. A deliberate attempt to rectify these misunderstandings by a vigorous propaganda was begun when their mischievous effect was realised, but the Americans are still of the opinion that in the arts of self-advertisement Britain is "not worth a red cent." The generosity, the enthusiasm, and the eloquence of the Americans are now providing ample compensation for this defect. The celebration of Britain's Day in theUnited States has evoked such a chorus of eulogy for Britain's share in the war as one nation has rarely received from another. Wheji the British people are next disposed tb pessimism by some great ordeal of peace or war they will only need to cull a few samples from this glowing anthology of praise in order to recover their cheerfulness.

General Pershing's testimony is one of the simplest and one of the best. " The ■war would have been lost," he says, "but for the tenacity of the British people," and the Dominions may be proud that the context shows that they are included in the eulogy. The tenacity of the British people has been one of the main secrets of their success in the past, but, according to the German estimate, years of peace, prosperity, and money-grub-bing had sapped this traditional virtue and left them sprawling an easy prey to a more virile race. The Kaiser, his General St&ff, and his once idolatrous, people know'better to-day. They have recognised in the stubbornness of the British soldier against overwhelming odds in the dark days of March and April the turning point in their last desperate effort for the mastery of the world. In the procession of the German fleet into tho Firth of Forth —representing, as Mr. Prank; Simonds says, < " the most stupendous surrender in the history of the seas," they see the evidence that the British sailor is still as invincible a champion of the liberties of the world as he was in the days of Nelson. To Wilhelm 11., as to Napoleon, British tenacity and British sea-power have been the rocks upon which his ambition has been shattered.