THE H.B. TRIBUNE WEDNESDAY, April 12, 1933 AMERICAN HOSTILITY?.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 103, 12 April 1933, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE WEDNESDAY, April 12, 1933 AMERICAN HOSTILITY?.

A notable, even if somewhat dogmatic, article is that appearing in last month’s number of the “English Review” from a contributor using the pen-name of “Ignotus.” In it he deals with Anglo-American relations from a point of view that is not often adopted in public. That is that among the citizens of the United States, taken in the mass, the great body of electors upon whose votes politicians have to depend for getting into Congress, there is no very great love felt for Great Britain. It is altogether misleading, he says, for British visitors to the United States, meeting there only the more cultured, courteous and hospitable classes to tell us otherwise. It is only from, a more or less intimate movement among the middleclass and industrial masses that any reliable idea of the real and controlling national sentiment is to be gathered. From them there is no difficulty in arriving at a conviction that “the psychological dominant of the American people is not a convenient good will towards us, but a latent and inherent hostility—more readily to be evoked than against any other nation with the exception of Japan.” The explanation of this he finds to be easy and natural when it is remembered that, as a political entity, the Republic arose from its successful revolt against an autocratic England, and that memory of this fact has been kept very much alive among all succeeding generations. Thus, even among those descended from the original British stock, the “ancient grudge” has been continuously maintained and is still very active. As for those of the polyglot peoples that, since the Civil War, have made up the continuous flow of immigration into the country—“lrish, Germans, and the hordes of hotch-potch nationalities from other parts of Europe—they could only too readily accept hostility to England as the first characteristic of the genuine American.” It matters nothing to all these that there is no corresponding feeling on the part of

the British people. In fact, they cannot be got to believe that for the great bulk of the British population there never was such a thing as an American War of Independence. But it is not only these survivals of long bygone days that operate in the mind of the hun-dred-per-cent American. Despite all his pride in the advance of his own country in wealth and prosperity, he is still jealously conscious of the fact that Great Britain has stood strongly in the way of its assuming the world’s leadership, even in the financial and commercial spheres. This feeling, too, has during the last few years been only accentuated and aggravated by the fact that conditions created by the Great War gave full promise of such leadership falling from Great Britain upon American shoulders. The review writer is able to cite the writing of even such a friend of England as the American wartime Ambassador, Walter Page, as visualising this with absolute and well satisfied confidence. Now all these bright visions have been completely dissipated and, to their very deep chagrin, Americans see Great Britain standingbefore them, shaken perhaps, but strong in her foundations, and still commanding the trust of the other trading nations of the world. When Britain was forced off the gold standard Americans, with all their vast hoard of the yellow metal to play with, felt their position at the head was fully assured, and for all time. But, instead of this result, they find that this abandonment would seem to mark merely a new phase in London’s long history as the world’s financial centre, while America herself is left with tons of gold of which she does not know how to make any really profitable use. And it is in this question of the gold standard that our writer sees one of the problems that will be most difficult of adjustment between the two countries. Most unreasonably, of course, the Ottawa agreements, with their concurrent British import duties, have also been matter for great offence in the American mind, so long used to the completely free access given to American products in British markets. Thus in very many ways the average American, with his hopes of world leadership shattered and in the midst of an economic domestic cataclysm of unprecedented violence, feels just now exceptionally sore against Great Britain, in whose actions he sees one of the main causes of the sad disappointments that have fallen upon him. Hence “Ignotus” would draw the conclusion that it is best for the British people not to depend overmuch on American good will as an element in coming negotiations. It is, however, as well perhaps for us to bear in mind that his article was written before the Roosevelt Administration had declared its policy, and that the happenings of the last few weeks might induce at least some little modification of his so confidently expressed views.