The Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2928, 25 July 1911, Page 4

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

When Sir Edward Grey last March told the House of Commons that he was prepared to enter iuto negotiations with the United States of America for a treaty that should remove, practically, any and every cause of future disagreement between the two nations from the possibility of its settlement by other means than those of arbitration, a wave of congratulatory approval swept through America and the Empire. This, indeed, was an appreciabh contribution towards restricting the chances of warwhile with the two great English speaking nations thus agreed who dare assert what might not follow 1 As usual there weie those who formed an altogether too rosy picture of the near future and talked of days when there tliould be no more human slaughter, and when each of us would love our neighbours as we love ourselves. And there was that section—equally extreme and equally erroneous—that conjured up and promulgated visions of disaster. What would happen, these erratic people asked, if Japan and America were at war ? Why, they continued, England has an offensive and defensive treaty of alliance with Japan ! Would Kngland, then, not have to stand by Japan and oppose the United States? The query, as such queries invaiiably are, was grounded on the assumption that the Statesmen of the two countries were fools. The imagined contingency has been provided for. Great Britain and Japan have mutually cancelled their old treaty of Alliance and drawn up a new one to last for ten years. In this it is distinctly provided that in the event of war, in which Japan or Britain is engaged, neither of the contracting parties shall be called upon actively to intervene against a third power with whom either of them has entered into an arbitration treaty. In other words the proposed AngloAmerican treaty hacked and buttressed as it is by this new Japanese Alliance will, beyond question, make for the peace of the world and, therefore, for the advancement of mankind.