MARK OF AMITY

Evening Star, Issue 21934, 22 January 1935, Page 14

MARK OF AMITY

BRITISH GIFT TO U.S.A. PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE “ COMMON OUTLOOK " Sir Ronald Lindsay, the British Ambassador to the United States, and Henry L. Stimson, former United States Secretary of State, declared recently in addresses before the Council on Foreign Relations that Anglo-American friendship and co-operation rested upon firmer ground than treaties or protocols, states the ‘ New York Times.’ They addressed a small but distinguished gathering in the Council House, 45 East Sixty-fifth street, at a ceremony which President Roosevelt, in a message read at the meeting, said represented a further step in the cementing of friendship between nations.” The occasion was the presentation by the British Ambassador, on behalf of tho Royal Institute of International Affairs of London, of 131 volumes comprising all the important English State papers from 1812 until 1929. Last April, in a ceremony at Chatham House in London, the council presented a similar set of American State papers to tho Royal Institute. ROOSEVELT MESSAGE. President Roosevelt's message was read by Mr George W. Wickersham, who presided at the ceremony. It follows : The President of the Council on Foreign Relations, It is with great pleasure that I send my greetings to the Council on Foreign Relations on this occasion, representing as it does a further step in the cementing of friendship between nations. I hope that in the future our outlook shall extend to the frontiers of mankind, and. that we with other peoples shall, appreciate with tolerance the hopes, the difficulties, the ambitions, and tho qualities of our neighbours who become ever closer as science continues to annihilate time and space. May your progress keep pace in showing the ways of wisdom; for the ways of wisdom and of peace are the same. Franklin D. Roosevelt. SIR RONALD’S ADDRESS. Sir Ronald pointed out that in tho first volume of English State papers compiled by Lewis Hcrtslct, once librarian to the British Foreign Office, were included a treaty of alliance between England and Portugal signed in 1373 and still in force. It also contained a treaty between England and the United Sates, which, he said, “ unhappily became obsolete.”

“ But whatever the intrinsic value may be of the presentation,” he continued, “ 1 attach an infinitely greater extrinsic value both to the gift itself and to the little ceremonies of last spring in London and of to-day in this place. For the Council on Foreign Relations here in New York and the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London are engaged in intensive and objective study of the whole field of foreign affairs throughout the world, and 1 feel confident that wherever the problem under study is of more than local concern, wherever it takes on a truly international character, and as such becomes of considerable importance, almost invariably and inevitably, sometimes directly and in the foreground, and more often indirectly or even with some degree of remoteness, arises the question of the attitude towards that problem of the two great English-speaking races and of their position towards each other in regard to it. Dow often student sign for an Anglo-American cooperation that shall be ever closer, and how important it must be that men oJ goodwill on each side of the ocean should seek.to forward it! “ I have never thought that AngloAmerican co-operation must depend on the existence of any treaty between our Governments, indeed, that co-opera-tion cannot be defined in articles or limited in stipulations—or tied down in protocols. it must be based on the deeper strata of our common moral outlook on the world, on our love of justice and our hatred of war, on our passion for freedom and our abhorrence of oppression. And just as in physical geology the deepest strata are usually the thickest, so on the reliable granite of moral principle our Governments will base their foreign policies, and then find that they have common aims. a It is not often that a Government takes the trouble to define in a public document the moral principles which underlie its actions, but these principles are implicit in every lino of hundreds of papers which our two Governments issue and in hundreds of treaties which they sign with every nation under'the sun.” GIFT ACCEPTED. Accepting the gift on behalf of the council, Mr Stimson said he, too, always had held the belief that the understanding between Groat Britain and the United States was “ not of a nature to be recorded in treaties.” Then he added:— After all, the most secure and permanent of national policies are not those which are embodied in formal treaties. I,ike the English common law, such policies are founded on repeated precedents precedents established by the actions of Governments made in accordance with the instinctive feelings and convictions of their peoples.” Mr Stimson, who declared that cooperation between the United States and England “ should he the first principle of our navigation ” in charting a course over the troubled seas of international affairs, continued; *' The Monroe Doctrine was not a treaty signed by an American executive and ratified by an American Senate, yet for a century it has stood as one of tho most strongly-felt and iirmlyheld policies of our Government. That has been because it represented the convictions of our people as to their national safety. “ is it too much to expect now that matters involving the peace of the world, in these days when peace is more necessary to safety than ever before and when another World War might entirely destroy our modern fragile civilisation, a policy of mutual consultation and co-operation between the Englishspeaking nations might be put into permanent effect by the repeated precedence of their respective Governments? “ I believe that such a policy would lie found to be in accordance with the deepest convictions of our peoples, both as to their own safety and as to the peace and safety of the entire world, and 1 believe that if it could be brought about it would ho regarded as a priceless compensation for even the anxieties and dangers through which we arc now passing.”