"HATE AND HUMOUR"

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue XLIX, 5 January 1916, Page 8

"HATE AND HUMOUR"

AMERICA AND EUROPE.

J "Existing treaties speak of 'the mostfavoured nation,' " savs the "New York •Evening Post." "New ones will soon be tsing the phrase 'the most-hated nation.' At least, one might think so if he were to .believe all that he hears about the United States being entitled to that distinction.- Many Americans are saying that their country is now the most hated on earth. Some of them add that it will continue to be. so after the war is over. The latter, of course, link 1 the thing up "with-their warnings that we must arm to thj teeth in preparation for attack. We are so hated that several- of the nations in Europe will hasten to turn their ■weapons against -us, as <soon as they have done killing each other off. The exaggeration in this is obvious. But what is the substratum of fact in. it? How intense is European hatred of the United States? What are its causes? How long is it likely to last, and what are its effects likely io be? "Let <us begin with reports ■ from abroad- The feeling about Americans, ■to which Americans themselves testify from Berlin, Paris, London, is no doubt frequently one of bitterness. But its manifestations are self-contradictory, and it„is due to reasons which are clearly temporary. The Germans hate us because we hare done so much for the Allies." The Allies" hato us because we have done nothing for them. Both cannot ;be right. .And in time both will co*ne to .-.a- sounder view of our role. Germans assert- indignantly that they would- have won had not .America furnished, the French and English with munitions of war. "But their own mili-tary-historians will presently he telling them that their armies received a fatai check at the Marne before a pound of powder'or a single shell from the United .States h.nd reached France. And if the result of the war has been to start a great flow of capital to America, and make our. financial strength commanding, that can scarcely be our fault. We ' did not make the war. If anybody is J to be hated for its awful consequence's, » it onght to be" th<* men who, in the -language of Kaiser Frederick, .«at around a green table and signed the orders which desolated Europe." i