COMMON FRONT

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 81, 6 April 1938, Page 10

COMMON FRONT

BRITAIN AND U.S.

"RELATIONS NEVER BETTER"

(Special to the "Evening Post.")

PALMERSTON N., This Day.

"Anglo-American relations . have never been better in our time," said Dr. G. H. Scholefield, Parliamentary Librarian, when speaking at Feilding. "They are better today than ever they were in the period of the Great War and both nations have been brought to a common front by developments in the Far East." Dr. Scholefield added that war debts were no longer a subject of discussion. In fact, it was difficult to secure any mention of the question. It was certainly no obstacle to a good understanding between Great Britain and America. The relationship between the two nations was such as to suggest in the minds of many people that the United States was oh the point of entering into an alliance with Great Britain. In some quarters there was a seeming impatience with America for not making the move that conditions and circumstances appeared to suggest.

AMERICA'S DESTINY. 'Dr. Scholefield discredited any prospect of an alliance, because the American outlook was definitely against committing the nation to obligations outside its own borders. The destiny of the American people was in America. There was absolutely no desire for adventures abroad.1 It was a self-con-tained country with no ambitions or jealousies abroad-and a frontier still within the United States. The coun-. try's policy was one of self-sufficiency with no obligations/wars, commitments, or meddling' abroad. This was the outlook of the people and definitely a national policy. ' ' One rightly a^ked why the nation came into the Great War. Thinking men andwomen of America still wondered what brought the United States in and there was a feeling that the country, caught unawares and carried away on an impulse, threw its might into the struggle. The only other occasion in which America intervened was in the Spanish-American War, when the United States battleship Maine was siink, an act attributed to the Spaniards. It later transpired that this was not the case' and the disclosure deepened doubts about foreign wars. The feeling against alliances was very deep-rooted among the people, and while readers of the-Press might be inclined to draw conclusions from such utterances'as that of President Roosevelt in October last when he proposed, speaking of the wars in Spain and China, concerted effort by peace-loving people throughout v,the world, the speaker repudiated any suggestion of an alliance..