AMERICA IN THE PACIFIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11954, 1 May 1902, Page 4

AMERICA IN THE PACIFIC.

The prompt disclaimer by the American President and the American Press of the "spread-eagleism" recently indulged in by the Secretary of the American Treasury should help to soothe our ruffled British feelings. That American energy and wealth will command an honourable and influential position in international waters is never questioned by British speakers and writers. We are moved by the sense of this to anticipate not enmity and rivalry, but peace and amalgamation. The same anticipation is shared by the most far-seeing of American statesmen, who lose no opportunity of insisting upon the desirability of a mutual understanding between the Anglo-Saxon powers. The statements of Mr. Shaw were particularly ill-advised and objectionable, because they give colour to the interested attempt being made in certain colonial circles to perpetuate the old AngloAmerican antagonisms which are so happily dying out. But we -may learn from the equally ill-advised and objectionable assertions sometimes made by colonial statesmen, when our relations with America are under discussion, that a people are in no way committed to every foolish utterance which may be made for party or sectional purposes, even by men holding high public office. And the prompt disclaimer of Mr. Roosevelt and the representative American Press—recalling the unanimous American protest which followed upon the indefensible attitude assumed by Mr. Cleveland upon the Venezuelan question—may well assure us that the overwhelming weight of American public opinion is securely rooted in an instinctive and inevitable tendency to work hand in hand with the British half of the race for the mutual protection of common interests and to cooperate more and more with us in international affairs.