The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1944. Cultural Links With America

Timaru Herald, Volume CLV, Issue 22785, 8 January 1944, Page 4

The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1944. Cultural Links With America

PROFESSOR All an Nevins, one of the most distinguished contemporary American historians, recently visited New Zealand as a representative of the United States Office of War Information. His tour has been extended to Australia and in Melbourne this week Professor Nevins revealed that he is working out proposals for the appointment of a joint committee for the promotion of cultural relations between Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Professor Nevins, in explanation of his proposal, said it was now evident that after the war the United States "would be planted more firmly in the Pacific.’' It seemed possible, he added, that the United States might be given complete or partial possession of the Marshall and Caroline Islands and would necessarily have to work in close partnership with Australia and New Zealand. Perhaps the better way of describing the probable post-war situation in the Pacific is that Australia and New Zealand will find it necessary to stand in extremely close relation with the United States. The Pacific war has forced the United States, Australia and New Zealand into a partnership which cannot be broken in the post-war period. The defeat of Japan will not dispose finally of the problems lying behind the war; they will await solution when the war ends, and the satisfactory solution of them, if one is to be found at all, can come only from patient, honest and sustained collaboration. As a matter of expediency the countries with interests in the Pacific wilt have to stand together, but it does not follow that their viewpoints on every question will be identical. Differences rnay arise, but they will not cause anxiety if there is a basic understanding among the Pacific nations. Anything that can promote such understanding must be encouraged.

In his address to Harvard University last September, Mr Winston Churchill said: “The great Bismarck is said to have observed toward the close of his life that the most potent factor in human society towards the end of the nineteenth century was the fact that the British and American peoples, spoke the same language. That was a pregnant saying. Certainly it has enabled us to wage war together, with an intimacy and harmony never before achieved among Allies. This gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship?’ Whatever progress is made elsewhere towards continuing AngloAmerican unity, relations in the Pacific must, as a self-protective necessity, be firmly founded. Mr Churchill hinted at the possibility of common citizenship. This proposal was submitted recently to a number of representative American citizens by the American Mercury. Some applauded it, some did not, but the Chancellor of New York University got to the heart of the proposal without committing himself to it. He said: “I should personally go a long way with Prime Minister Clvurchill in his suggestion that ultimately there should be common citizenship for all English-speaking people. This does not to my mind imply a common government or any surrender of national sovereignty. It simply recognises once and for all the fact that in spite of differences and family quarrels we belong together in a sense that is not true of any other two nations in the world. It is, so io speak, a formal assertion of that fact. ’

Australia and New Zealand have much to gain and nothing to lose from ,closer cultural relations with the United States, a country which will remain for a long time what it has already become, the main centre of western civilisation. The intellectual life of the United States is richer now than it has ever been. America has offered refuge to many of the greatest European people in literature, art and music; the presence of these refugees has had a general stimulating effect in the United States. It would be beneficial for New Zealanders and Australians to feel directly the enobling cultural influences at work now in the United States. The direction he would like America to take was explained by Professor Nevins in an article in the Saturday Review of Literature last July when he wrote:

America finds that it has a rich inheritor’s responsibilities. The wealth which it thought was to be all Its own has instead to be shared. When Americans were winning their

independence, consolidating their unity and hewing their way across the continent, they said: “This is for us and our posterity. The rest of the world is far away and must make the best of its unhappy lot. We have earned this, we shall keep it,, and we shall enjoy it.” But suddenly the rest of the world is at our door, its cries of want and pain jarring our selfishness. More than that, we find that its disasters are our disasters, its poverty is our poverty. Immutable laws of social and economic hydrostatics connect our lot with that of the rest of mankind. As their level rises and falls, so does ours. Our wealth, material, cultural and moral, in brains, energy, goods and vision, is not to be hugged to our bosoms; we are in part trustees and distributors, not possessors.

Americans are ready to share their cultural possessions; they are anxious to help those who wish to be helped, and it seems that part of the mission of Professor Nevins in Australia and New Zealand is to find ways of opening the doors of Pacific countries to intangible though immensely valuable American riches. The joint committee he proposes for the promotion of cultural relations appears to be a necessary preliminary. It would be founded on goodwill and would breed goodwill in the future when that quality might be even more necessary than it is now.