[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
Stit,—To me, as to very many other Englishmen, the judgement of America upon the policies of this country is a matter of great interest, not to say concern. I should like therefore, if I may, to put before your recent correspondent from Cleveland, Ohio, Mr. Spear—who condemns the recent proceedings and decisions of our Government with so much acerbity—some considerations which may not, when he wrote, have been present to his mind He purports, I take it, to address you, not as an individual, but as an American, and to speak for America. In that capacity he tells us that our failure to go to war to save the government of Czechoslovakia from the fate of King George III was so grave a dereliction of moral duty as to have forfeited, and to have deserved to forfeit, American sympathies.
Mr. Spear would not, I imagine, think it wrong for us, before making the fatal decision, to have endeavoured to appraise the probable consequences for European civilisation of a general war. Nor would he probably be disposed to underestimate the importance of the assistance rendered to the Allies in the late war by America, both before and after her armed inter- vention. Yet now, when Italy and Japan are no longer probable allies, but possible opponents, the United States have declared, by various public acts, that, short of fighting against us, they will do almost everything in their power to prevent our winning.
Mr. Spear's attitude is not that of one advising us for our own security, but that of one denouncing us for betraying, as he thinks, a cause to which America attaches primary import- ance. In view of the facts that America has three times our population, and perhaps ten times our resources, and, above all, that she is safe, and could wage war both with limited liability and with decisive effect, is his a morally possible attitude ? Is it not that of one who, sitting inactive in a life-boat, should condemn another for not plunging into the sea in a common cause at the imminent risk of his life ?—Yours, &c., M. S. AMOS.
Ulpha, near Broughton-in-Furness.
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