SELF CRITICISM OF U.S. MISINTERPRETED IN BRITISH COUNTRIES

Wanganui Chronicle, 12 June 1950, Page 2

SELF CRITICISM OF U.S. MISINTERPRETED IN BRITISH COUNTRIES

WELLINGTON, Last Night (P.A.) —The American Ambassador, Mr. Robert M. Scott en, said today that self-criticism by the United States was being misinterpreted by British Commonwealth newspapers and causing misunderstanding among the Englishspeaking peoples. Addressing a luncheon meeting of the Wellington branch of the English Speaking Union, he said that though it was natural that the commonplace should not make news, this created a danger to Brit-ish-American relations. Too often news of the United States was not in the right perspective.

“Let us with moderation continue to find fault where fault may lie, but we must not waste our energies in self-flagellation,” he said. If some irresponsible politician or journalist in the United States made some intemperate attack against British the item seemed always to be picked up by the watchful British journalist and flashed to all papers in the Commonwealth, but when the remark was denounced and refuted by a score of the man's own compatriots, their words never seemed to get similar treatment.

If a politician made a preposterous charge, for instance, that the Department ot State was riddled with Communists, this was widely publicised and taken as a sign that the American people had lost all emotional balance. It was, unfortunately, not so well reported when such allegations were roundly denied and denounced, not oniy by responsible political leaders, including the politician’s own party colleagues, but from an overwhelming majority of American newspapers, whatever their, political leanings. “We seem to have, alas, a capacity for publicising the worst about ourselves,” said Mr. Scotten. “This may be a blessing in disguise. It may be necessary to have our sores exposed to guard us against hypocrisy, to keep us ever vigilant and to raise our practices to the level of our aspirations.” He appealed to the Englishspeaking peoples not to dwell upon their differences, which were merely the local dialects of a common language of freedom. Above all, no heed should be paid to the malevolent voices who tell the British people that their Commonwealth has been sold into bondage to America and who, in the same breath, tell Americans they are forwarding British imperial aims.