Last week's reception to Lord Cecil to celebrate the award
to him of the Nobel Peace Prize would have gone off better if the speeches had been fewer and briefer, but it was a great success none the less. Two observations of Lord Cecil's are worth recording. One, most admirably human, was a confession that he was very gratified to have been awarded the Peace Prize : " I am not one of those who profess not to care about such things ; I do like it." The other, political, deserves to be seriously considered. Lord Cecil has just come back from America (he was in the act of receiving an honorary degree from Columbia when the award of the Nobel Prize was announced) and he has formed one clear impression of public opinion there—that when Great Britain appears as a defender of international order she carries all America with her ; if ever a British spokesman tub-thumps about defending British interests all America remembers that isolationism is its birthright. That reading of the situa- tion demands attention—but what exactly does carrying all America with us amount to ?
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