AN AMERICAN VIEW
[To the Editor of TILE SPECTATOR] SIR,—It is not too much to say that no action of a foreign government has ever shocked the public sentiment of America so profoundly as Britain's part in the Czechoslovakian disaster. Even if France, directly, and Britain, indirectly, had not been bound by treaty obligations to defend Czechoslovakia against German aggression, and had not even up to a short time ago given public and private assurance that those obligations would be fulfilled, it would have been beyond belief that such a betrayal not only of democracy, but of humanity as well, could take place. But that Britain should practically coerce France into a breach of her treaty obligations was absolutely inconceivable.
The shock and diappointment are greatest among those who
have been the warmest friends of England and who would be most earnest in urging American co-operation with her in any emergency that seriously threatened her, but now it is probable that but little of that co-operative spirit will survive, especially since there is a feeling that Britain has so crippled herself that she will be neither willing nor able to make effective resistance to other German or Italian aggressions in other quarters, perhaps even against herself.
Many believe that Britain has definitely and permanently abdicated her leadership among the nations of the eastern hemi- sphere ; that she is now a second-rate Power and will soon become subservient, in all things, to Germany, Italy and Japan, who will wrest from her the control of the sea and will mono- polise the sea-borne commerce of the world. Some of these apprehensions may seem fantastic, but they are not so ill- founded as a prediction of Britain's present plight would have
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