CANNING'S CENTENARY

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 35, 10 August 1927, Page 9

CANNING'S CENTENARY

A STATESMAN OF THE PAST

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, Bth August. To-day is the hundredth anniversary of the death of George Canning, who was British Foreign Secretary from 1822 to 1827, and was Prime Minister for four months before his death. The newspapers devote leading articles to the great statesman. It is recalled that Canning, when he became Foreign Minister, was confronted with world conditions following the Napoleonic wars not dissimilar from those of recent times—all the problems of unrest arising out of the Napoleonic wars and complicated international policy. To steer a steady course amid currents and rocks needed both vision and strength, and Canning revealed himself as a great Minister.

As "The Times" remarks, to describe Canning's policy would be to ■write the history of the chief events and movements of those years in the Old World and the Hew. Lord Castlereagh, who had preceded him at the Foreign Office, saw before he did that England could not remain a partner in an alliance with Continental Governments which aimed at the suppression by arms of popular movements which began to break out over Europe shortly after the Napoleonic wars. Canning trod in his footsteps in developing and applying this view. He did much to foster in the world the idea of nationality, for which the revolution and Napoleon had prepared the way, and which his own disciple, Palmerston, adopted with less reserve. His recognition of the Spanish-American Kepublics was one of his most important strokes of policy.