THE H.B. TRIBUNE. SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 1911. ANGLO-AMERICAN AGREEMENT.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 82, 18 March 1911, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 1911. ANGLO-AMERICAN AGREEMENT.

I The very best news that has been ! cabled from Home for many a day :is that President Taft has approached the British Government with the object of putting through a positive agreement, Between America and Great Britain and her oversea dependencies, to abide by the adjudication of an. international Arbitral Court in every issue which cannot be settled by | negotiation, no matter what it inI volves, whether honour, territory, or money. It is perhaps a trifle early, because the proposals have yet to come before the American Senate, for congratulation on the achievement of an understanding which abolishes all possibility of war between the two nations; yet the British race has every cause to I rejoice that such a proposal has I come from America to indicate the • growth of a feeling of kinship } among English-speaking peoples • and express a sentiment which must eventually have a direct int fluence in controlling the warlike > passions and ambitions of rival i foreign Powers. Lord Charles ' Beresford, in yesterday’s cables, i expressed the opinion that the ! time had arrived when Englishi speaking countries should combine I to prevent, war, as peace was essential to us. His views in this i direction must appeal to all as i being the only way in which the i present mad struggle for the pos- ■ session of the biggest fleet can be ended. We have seen the futility i of diplomacy in dealing with the I question of limitation of annaI ments, and now know that nothing is left but to resort to armed force, or perhaps we may say the evidence of armed force, to preserve the world’s peace. The combined wealth of the British Empire and the United States, backed by a united fleet under the Union Jack and Stars and Stripes, would awaken’ Germany to the fact that her ambitions were face to face with too big a proposition to allow for a possible hope of realisation, and that her competition for sea supremacy must cease. It is time that the great waste of the resources of Great Britain and Germany upon war armaments should be stopped, and this end can only be brought about by the federation of the English-speaking countries. It is. as the Free Church’ministers state, “ The outbreak of war is threatened by the mere tension and intolerable strain.”