News of the Week
A New Epoch THE provisional arrangement on naval reduction which was in substance contrived by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and General Dawes and has now been announced as the result of Mr. MacDonald's visit to President Hoover _is, we cannot hesitate to say, by far the most important advance that has ever been made towards complete Anglo-American understanding. Some day it may be said of .our generation : " Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive."
The scheme is not a mere contract resting upon an accurate definition of mutual obligations. A con- tract of that kind might be drawn between enemies almost as easily as between friends. The whole point of what Great Britain and America have just accomplished is that it is a declaration of mutual trust. Frankly, we regard any formula of parity as make-believe. You cannot equalize essentially unequal things. American needs and our own are so utterly dissimilar that the different types of ships required could not be brought under any common denominator. The Americans nevertheless desired to have a formula Of parity, and that desire was an absolute justification of the Prime Minister's readiness to collaborate in the puzzling task of inventing one.
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