COMMON IDEALS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 118, 21 May 1941, Page 8

COMMON IDEALS

BRITAIN AND U.S.A.

THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM

VOICE FROM THE PAST

Speaking on the British-American co-operative movement at the Returned Soldiers' Association luncheon today, Mr. J. S. Barton, C.M.G., a foundation member of the movement, made a stirring plea for the closer vinculation of ideals which were manifestly shared by the two nations, and urged the furthering of what was, he considered, the most important work today.

All great movements came into being either by sudden realisation. that they were necessary at the time, or gradually, from the deep unconscious springs of human principles, sentiments, and conduct. The latter was the surer way to permanence. The British Empire had not come into being by a sudden resolution followed by the evolution of the necessary machinery to carry it out, but had just gro-\Vn, first from the realisation in England that colonisation at a distance was .imperative, and then, in New Zealand and Australia, by the trading and defence questions which followed colonisation. The Empire, in fact, grew automatically. The League of Nations, suddenly decided upon, had not been a great success, not because it was not # a fine ideal, or one impossible of realisation, but because it lacked the gradual extension of ideals from tribes to nations, and from nations to the world. A PRESSING NEED. The object of the movement was to work educationally towards the ideal that both nations, which had so much in common, could work together for a common ideal. While this was going on (and had gone on for some years) world shaking events were happening. The real task of co-operation was in fact to keep pace with rapidly growing feelings which had hitherto been • the dammed-jup sentiments of the two peoples. In a very short period we had seen history shaping itself, and common self-interest had brought together two great sections of the Eng-lish-speaking race, not by preparation, but by realisation of a pressing need. Co-operation between America and England was no new thing. The Crimean War in 1856 seemed long enough ago, yet in 1854 General G. Watson Webb, of the U.S.A. Army, made a speech obviously addressed to further the ideals of today. He said: "The contingency to which I allude as' being the only one which could prompt an interference in' European affairs is, I sincerely hope, far distant, but it is one which should never be lost sight of in England, and which may ultimately be averted altogether by its being constantly kept before the world—l mean a combination of the Continent (I mean of Europe) at some future day against England as the great embodiment of constitutional liberty in Europe. CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY. "That day may come: how soon if ever. He alone knows in Whose hands are the destinies of nations; but come when it may, our interests and our feelings will alike combine to make us come to the rescue. We shall come; it may be from a conviction that, in fighting your battles, we are contending for the cause of constitutional liberty. Our plea or our excuse may be self-preservation, but in such a contingency come we will, and be assured that the youthful giant—for we shall be a giant before that day arrives—will not come the less willingly, or strike the less effectively, because her strength will be put forth on behalf of a parent who. if she was not always a kind mother, gave us our Anglo-Saxon blood, and sent us forth imbued with her laws, her literature, and her love of constitutional liberty." During the present war. American sentiment at first was 86 per cent, to the effect that it was no matter for America to mix in. That percentage had decreased until today the bulk of true American people were solidly, behind us. Events had forced them to act in accordance with their true feelings. If the nations worked together we should see what never could otherwise have happened, the giving by the two members of the i English-speaking race to the whole world this ideal of constitutional liberty. It would no longer be a case of putting forward hypothetical ideals, but of one agent spreading the accepted ideals of both, the main ideal being a united outlook of two peoples who only needed collaboration to make them one. "I believe that that cause cannot be beaten," concluded Mr. Bar v b ton, "as I believe that the nation : holding the opposite ideals must be : beaten."