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MANAWATU DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 1919. WORLD SUPREMACY - SHOULD BRITAIN AND AMERICA BECOME PARTNERS?

From tlie scrappy and often inconsequential cablegrams which we receive in New Zealand from day to day it is hard indeed to gain even an approximate idea as to the conditions underlying the peace negotiations —or, rather, the after-war dispositions — which are being arranged between the Allies. This is the more difficult because people at this distance fail to realise that during the last four years a complete change has been wrought in international status. Before the war Great Britain answered all the tests of supremacy. She was:— 1. Supreme in finance. 2. Supremo in mercantile ships. 3. Supreme in ships of war.

Whatever nation has these three things is mistress of the seas, is dominant on land, and has that exalted “place in the sun” which Germany coveted, fought for, and lost everything for. These three things in August, 1916, England had, and had had for more than two hundred years. With the beginning of the war, and forced to it by necessity, England began a scries of transactions which, within a year, transferred the financial leadership to the United States.

Before the war America was deeply in debt to Britain, as was, indeed, every other country in the world. Before the war America used to pay England about £60,000,000 a year interest on moneys lent. Now England is paying America more than £30,000,000 a year interest on the money which the United States have lent her. In the ■first case England bought huge quantities of goods from America, and paid cash; then she borrowed great quantities of money on her national bonds; then site sold bach to the United States, in order to get ready money, hundreds of millions of American railway bonds, which had constituted the backbone of the private fortunes of many of her families; then later she pledged still more of those American railway bonds as collateral to raise money in America; then when America entered the war herself, her Government loaned huge sums of money direct to the British Government.

Great Britain “was” the greatest creditor nation in the world. She is so no longer; she “was” the greatest money market in the world —that went to the United States when war began. We don y t like to read of these things — to realise them —but if we desire to know why it is that President Wilson is playing such a predominant part in the world's affairs just now, how it is that his slightest utterance is regarded as almost oracular, tho oxplaua-

tion is that ho is talking with "dollars back of the conversation,’’ and that is a language* which all men must pause to hear whether they like it or not.

In the same way with shipping. Before the war England had almost half as many ships as all the rest of the, world put 'together. Of a world’s total of about fifty million tons, England had over twenty. These* ships were the keystone of her commercial and financial arch, the backbone of all her resources. With the war, shipbuilding practically ceased, owing to the calling up of the men. The wear and tear went on at the rate of about a million tons a year. Then the submarines got busy, and at one stage the Germans were sinking at the rate of five million tons a year. In desperation England withdrew her shipwrights from the battleline (a depletion which has much to do with subsequent set-backs) and started building ships. Finding she could not build enough, she turned in desperation to America. America responded, and laid down shipyards and plants on a scale unparalleled in history. As soon as she has finished the ships under way and contracted for. she will have more mercantile ships than England. That will be about the middle of this year. And if they keep going on the present ratio they will have twice as many ships as England now has.

In one thing alone is England predominant. England’s navy began the war with 2,500,000 tons and 140,000 men; it ends the war with 0.500,000 tons .of armed ships and 406,000 men. England’s navy as it stands to-day is more than equal to any two navies combined. But this essential fact must be borne in mind: —

Finance and shipping are revenue producers a navy is a revenue eater. » * * * But no'nation can keep a dominant navy unless it lias .ships and finance. This, then, is the position: Naval supremacy still remains with England; financial supremacy has passed to the United States; mercantile supremacy is midway between the tw r o nations. If the Americans wind up their present shipbuilding programme they will have about as many ships as England, but if they decide to go on and put their large plants and resources to their full use, they will seize the mercantile shipping supremacy which Great Britain has enjoyed fm< so many generations. * * * * The position is summed up fay Mark Sullivan, the financial editor of "Collier’s Weekly” (to whom wo arc indebted for the facts outlined) in these words: — "We are richer than Great Britain only because Great Britain was more than four years in the war, and wc only a year and a-half. Great Britain, with France, bore the brunt, ( wdiile we came in merely for the finishing blow. If senior partnership in an enterprise were determined by ‘resources expended.,’ ’England and France would bo the senior partners among the Allies. But as the world goes, senior partnership in an enterprise is determined by ‘resources not yet expended.’ And it is in that respect that America is easily senior. Wo have lost only about one dead to England’s seventy-five and to France’s hundred. We have expended less than one dollar to England’s two. The position we are in came without intrigue, or any sort of intention. It was merely one of thc accidents of the way in which the war worked out.” *»* * * Mr Sullivan then proceeds to discuss means by -which the situation may be adjusted on the linos of equity and with mutual benefit. He has recently had the benefit of talking things over with the leading statesmen of Groat Britain, France and America, and sums up in those words: — "There is a course which is not generous or emotional, but has elements of logic. And while no one has stated it formally, it is easy to recognise a groping towards it in the minds of many public men and leaders.of thought. ... We can become England’s partner. ... 1 know from conversations with English statesmen that, vaguely, some such notion, not yet clear in details oven to themselves, is in the back of many men’s minds. It is the basis for many suggestions of an Englishspeaking union, or an Anglo-Saxon union. It is the material and commercial basis for the proposed League of Nations. If the thing is to be confined to just Great Britain and her colonies and the United States, it is what men mean when they talk of an English-speaking union. If a larger group is to be taken in, it is the League of Nations. ... So far all the talk of a. League of Nations has been in the world of abstraction and idealism. What is here set down about ships and money and battleships is the ‘bones’ of it.” With these things in view, it will be possible for our readers to gain a better and broader grip of the issues at stake, and the difficulties and complications which are likely to beset the path of the wai’-settlement negotiations on every hand.

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/MT19190103.2.16

Bibliographic details

Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 14096, 3 January 1919, Page 4

Word Count
1,277

MANAWATU DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 1919. WORLD SUPREMACY – SHOULD BRITAIN AND AMERICA BECOME PARTNERS? Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 14096, 3 January 1919, Page 4

MANAWATU DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 1919. WORLD SUPREMACY – SHOULD BRITAIN AND AMERICA BECOME PARTNERS? Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 14096, 3 January 1919, Page 4

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