- THE WAR AND RUBBER
Sra,—As one who desires more than anythtng else some sort of working agreement between those ancient and stubborn enemies, Great Britain and the United States of America, may I ask you to publish this protest against the continual, wilful misuse and interpretation of that vague formula, the Atlantic Charter ? In your last issue, Sir Andrew McFadyean writes of its "violation." The private opinions of President Roosevelt, Sir, can no more be " violated " than those of any other man. Naturally every Englishman who shares the aspirations set forth in the collaborated pipe-dream of the distinguished statesmen, longs to believe that they have somehow, magically, the force of treaty signed by two of the less un- scrupulous nations. But this is not a way of thinking worthy of any man who has heard of Woodrow Wilson's part in the Treaty of Versailles. Apparently it needs to be stated every week in England that the President of the United States has no power to commit the United States to inter- national obligations. The great dream can only hate reality when its radical ideas are put into action by all those eagerly reforming and bitterly conflicting economic interests of which Sir Andrew writes. Each time we act as if they were already reality, äo we not put their realisation further
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