THE
ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD.
BY EVELYN WRENCH.
NOT sufficient publicity has been given to the fact that at Portland, Oregon, officers and men from the three British warships in port took part in the Fourth of July parade. The Times Washington cor- respondent forwards an extract from President Harding's speech on the occasion, in which he said it was the first time in history that British sailors had joined in a Fourth of July celebration, and dwelt on its significance. The President added :— "I hope this bit of history enacted here to-day will prove significant. It brings home to us that the English-speaking peoples of the world have a common aspiration. I hope the British and American Navies will always march towards ;the glorious accomplishments of peace."
After a very strenuous fortnight of speech-making across the continent—and only those who are familiar with the North American climate in July can realize all that such an undertaking involves—President Harding has arrived in Alaska, that northern playground of the United States. But the President's Alaskan visit will be anything but a holiday, and it is questionable whether his speech-making is any more strenuous than his Alaskan travels will be. For a very long time American public opinion has been restive concerning the stagnation of Alaska, which presents a curious analogy to that of Australia's "white elephant "—the Northern Territory. Both these countries urgently need better means of transport, both have large undeveloped mineral resources, and both have great possibilities as grazing countries.
Readers of American periodicals have long been familiar with this unsatisfactory state of affairs, for there have been many criticisms of the Washington Adminis- tration's handling of Alaska. These complaints of a superfluity of red tape, and of lack of co-operation between the authorities in Alaska and at Washington, have a strangely familiar ring to the Englishman who is interested in Empire development and is accustomed to think that Downing Street has a monopoly of the first- named commodity. One of these days, by the way, I hope to write a defence of "Downing Street," for assuredly, while many faults of commission and omission are attributable to it, yet the British Commonwealth owes it a very great debt of gratitude. In Alaska, which has been described as America's "foster-child," the population decreased by 10,000 in the last decade. President Harding is accompanied by several members of his Cabinet and a number of experts, and his recom. mendations will be awaited with interest.
If Alaska is to become a great tourist resort for ths American people, its railways and steamers and its hotels will have to be improved. Indeed, one of the chief complaints made at present in the United States is that most of the 5,500 American tourists who visited the country last year were conveyed thither in Canadian steamships. What Alaska needs is a great concern like the Canadian Pacific Railway to do for it what that railway company has done for the Canadian Rockies.
It is a curious coincidence that at a moment when the head of the American Administration should be on his way to investigate conditions in the American "Northern Territory," the Governor of South Australia, Sir Tom Bridges, should be returning from his motor journey to the Conunonwealth's "never-never land." All who took part in the tour were impressed with the vast extent of the country through which they passed for some 1,500 miles, with its emptiness and its great possibilities. All that it needs, according to the South Australian Premier, are railways and a properly con- trolled water supply. Nowhere did the party see any " desert " land, Congratulations to the Observer on the publication of Mr. Philip Kerr's first very illuminating article on "The New World and the Old." Here is a writer who, while familiar with the Chancelleries of Europe, has studied conditions in the United States and the Dominions at first hand. His words carry with them that indefinable " atmosphere " of one who has thought out our Old World problems on the great open spaces of the New World, as he has done. Mr. Kerr does well to emphasize that much-overlooked fact, which should be the very pivot of our policy, that we are politically a non- European Power, despite the geographic situation of these islands, and that the prior interests of the British Commonwealth must of necessity be overseas. It is for that reason that the co-operation of the United States and the British Commonwealth, despite temporarily retarding circumstances, is inevitable and carries with it fair promise for the future.
At any moment we may expect the Government's statement concerning the much-vexed Kenya problem, and it is generally anticipated that the maintenance of Downing Street control will be the only possible solution as safeguarding the rights of the 3,000,000 native inhabitants. Nothing that has appeared in print from the protagonists of either side would warrant the British Government in handing over the administration of the country to 9,000 white settlers or 80,000 Indians. On the delicate subject of the franchise it is difficult to see how a world-State such as ours, based on concepts of freedom, can apply any other doctrine in the long run than that of "equal political treatment for equal qualifications " ; or, as Cecil Rhodes put it in South Africa, political rights "for every civilized man south of the Zambesi." How else would it be possible for India, advancing towards Dominion status, to become a partner in the British Commonwealth of Free Nations ? At the same time, great care must be taken so that Western democratic institutions are not granted before those concerned are ready for them.
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