POST-WAR POLICIES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 2, 4 January 1943, Page 3

POST-WAR POLICIES

ADJUSTMENT NEEDED BRITISH-U.S. CO-OPERATION London, Dec. 30. The American outlook is being carefully noted in Britain in view of its utmost importance after the war. Thus the latest speech of the American Vice-President, Mr. H. A. Wallace, is widely noted and commented on, chiefly favourably. The Times, in a leader, observes that Congress assembles next week for a session which promises to be one of the most momentous in history. It continues: ‘‘While there will be no slackening in any quarter in America's determination to achieve victory in the completes! form, yet the remoter prospect is less certain. "At present Americans whose names are most familiarly known and whose utterances are very frequently quoted abroad are all men deeply convinced of the necessity of maintaining close collaboration after the war. But because they are prominent it does not follow that they are or will remain representative of American opinion. The men who killed Versailles in Washington were not for the most part well known outside their own country. Mr. Taft went out of his way recently to remind the world that the Atlantic Charter is, on the American side, an act of Presidential policy not binding Congress. To-day a small minority of Democrats and a somewhat larger minority of Republicans make no secret of their aversion to any long-term involvement of the United States in the affairs of other continents.

“So long as the war lasts, vocal expression of this traditional aversion may he restrained, but it would be foolhardy to ignore its persistence and vigour.” The Thues goes on to say that a fatalistic, view of these trenus would be r-ually out of place, and expresses Lie view that American opinion about American post-war policy should be regarded as something still indeterminate, which can be profoundly ailected by the policies and att.tudes of the rest ot the world, notably Great Britain. "Prospects of continued American collaboration after the war are bound up with the readiness of the rest or the world, Great Britain in particular, to formulate and pursue policies which tne American people recognise as identical or consistent with tneir own "The moral lor the British is not that they must await a declaration ot American views and American policy in order that they may conform their own views and policy to it, but that they should base these oif the quality of boldness in adventure. And nothing is more certain than the ripeness of public tempei in this country for the kind of leadership which will so shape the national policy as to give full rein to that quality once more. "Positive American alms are part humanitarian, part commercial, but they are not at all political. Many Americans would refuse to regard a humanitarian programme as involving political responsibilities in other continents; they would regard it as entirely compatible with the rejection of such responsibilities. It is true, and likely to remain true, that Americans are interested in policies that are primarily constructive, not those that are primarily coercive, in the welfare of human beings, rather than frontiers and political guarantees. Prospects of maintaining American collaboration after the war and overcoming endemic trends toward isolationism depend in a large part on the extent to which the policies of other countries, Great Britain in particular, are directed to these ends.”