HISTORIC MEETING.

Timaru Herald, Volume CVII, Issue 16478, 25 February 1918, Page 11

HISTORIC MEETING.

- IN AN HISTORIC ROOM, C Ori Tuesday, November < 20, members of the American Mission met the; British War Cabinet and the Heads 'of the Department most intimately con- - corned in the war at No. 10, Downing Street. * In welcoming the" Mission, the Prime Minister said that it was a source of great satisfaction to himself and. his colleagues that this gathering of two nations, now, equally dedicated to the .common tusk of (Mending the liberties of the world, should take place in the -•' very room in which statesmen of an, "" earlier and less enlightened generation . had Committed the blunders which had : estranged them. The meeting, remarks "The Times," was essentially a business meeting to consider how the "United States could best work with us and with the other Allies for the single end we have in view.But the dullest imagination must bo stirred "by this gathering of the represenatives of the two great Englishspeaking peoples for such a purpose" ' upon such a scene. Until a century \ and a half ago, they were one people -r with a common inheritance of blood :: and of language, of political and re- v. ligious thought, of institutions, habits, character, and traditions coming down to them through Countless generations. Then the claim of the colonists to selfgovernment divided them from the Mother Country, and just because they " were of the same family the kinsmen stubbornly fought their quarrel out. It was in the room and at the table where the decisiong which made tho severance inevitable w&re taken, and where the treaty of peace with tho new Republic was signed, that their representatives took counsel together yesterday against _the enemy of "the polity and of the civilisation they have j developed. Franklin had pleaded and ■■■ protested there; Adams and Jay had doubtless often called there in the negotiations for the settlement to which their names are set with his. The successor of North and of Port- ~ land, who welcomed the American » delegation, was laying practical prob- • lems before practical and busy men, " but nobody with Mr Lloyd George's v cast of mind could pass over facts so. % striking without a word- We do not * doubt that they will appeal to millions on both sides of the ocean. Thoughtful men will everywhere feel that this meeting, whose aim is the protection of human freedom, could have no more appropriate setting than the room iu Downing Street where that great chap- . tier in its history was largely written. . It was not only the independence of tha United Sfates which that chapter determined. It decided the future of the British Empire as well. We have never forgotten the lessons that it taught us. From them we have learnt how a great democratic Empire must! '■• be moulded and preserved. Statesmen sat in the old room in Downing Street even in those days to whom the secret was clear. Chatham saw it, and Edmund Burke, and many of the Rockingham Whigs. "Things could not be otherwise," said Burke, than that' Englishmen beyond the seas should, claim the full rights of Englishmen. But th'ey preached to deaf ears in a Parliament of "King's friends" and placemen, and the miserable quarrel followed which long estranged the two peoples, who have mora in common, <Ss Dr Pase has said, than any peoples • , ever had before.