LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[In view of the paper shortage it is essential that letters on these pages should be brief. We are anxious not to reduce the number of letters, but unless they are shorter they must be fewer. Writers are urged to study the art of compression.—Ed., "The Spectator."'
ISOLATIONIST AMERICA
SIR,—Mr. J. Radinsky's letter reveals such a radical misunder- standing of the present struggle in Europe that it cannot be allowed to pass without challenge.
The Allies are not engaged in a war to impose a democratic form of government on the German nation. Russia is opposed to the democratic ideal, but France and Great Britain are not at war with her. We are fighting to preserve our own exist- ence and the continuance of the Commonwealth of Nations (which we call the British Empire), both of which we believe are worth saving.
There are also, however, subsidiary issues at stake which would probably eventually have involved us in a European war. (t) We believe that international government is impossi- ble unless nations respect solemn treaties voluntarily entered into with other nations, as with Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, Austria, Denmark and France: but Germany has repudiated all of these. (2) We believe that small nations like Austria, Norway, Holland and Belgium have the same rights of liberty and freedom as the greater Powers : Germany has threatened or overrun them all. (3) We hold that every law-abiding citizen is entitled to the protection of life and property in a well-governed State: Germany has persecuted her minorities and pillaged and tortured her Jewish citizens (with this view Mr. Radinsky, as a Jew, may be in agreement). (4) We believe that there is not any issue of dispute between nations that is not capable of peaceful settlement by mutual goodwill : Germany has chosen instead the arbitrament of war. (5) We claim that justice and honesty are the foundations of all good government: Germany has poisoned the springs of truth and repudiated the ideals on which civilisation is founded.
No one in Britain who knows the United States (as I do, for I have lived there and have re-visited it many times during the last forty years) believes that its population is dominantly Anglo-Saxon: probably not more than to per cent, are so by origin: but its conceptions of government are not dissimilar from our own ; the framers of the Statute of Independence were British by descent, and it is to be expected, therefore, that its citizens will look out on rife as we do. The United States has the same love of freedom, the same hatred of war. If its democracy differs from our own, it is only because she is less democratic in outlook than we are (though Mr. Radinsky would deny this) and that she is dominated by a plutocratic rather than an aristocratic form of government as we still are. We both profess to accept the religious inter- pretation of life and to be governed by its standards. We quite understand in Great Britain why the United States wishes to preserve her isolationist policy ; we adopted the same position ourselves when democratic Czecho-Slovakia was overwhelmed, and were bitterly reproached by the United States for doing so. But now that we are engaged in a life or death struggle we resent the constant vocal intervention of a powerful spectator. We wish to be allowed to fight our own battles in our own way and that our motives may not be belittled and misinterpreted. We do not forget that the League of Nations fathered upon Europe by President Wilson might have prevented the present conflict had America honoured her President's bond, and assert that these stirring times command respectful silence, if not approval.
For these reasons (among others), Mr. Radinsky rightly detects "an increasing asperity in the British Press" towards the vociferous criticism of her friendly neighbour. It is easy for him from the comfortable aloofness of Washington, D.C., to enlarge on the past failings of Great Britain (and he has omitted many of them of which we ourselves are aware), but we, nearer the scene of conflict, are feeding his starving nationals and housing his broken fellow citizens, and are there- fore more likely to realise truly the situation. Neutral citizens, who have been bombed at sea, after trusting to the promises of German protection, fill our hospitals ; terrorised children from other countries occupy our homes ; and these are more powerful arguments for our actions than a slightly stale academic diatribe from Seattle-6,000 miles from the scene of action. We are familiar with the argument of "power politics" which reaches us in the less reputable sections of the American Press each week, and we know the falsity of it. Britain wishes only to live at peace with her European neighbours—Germany included—she hates the horrors of war as passionately as the most pacifist American, but there are still some ideals that her sons are prepared to fight and to die for, although they may not be apparent to Mr. Radinsky.—Yours sincerely,
ANGUS WATSON.
Whitewell, Adderstone Crescent, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 2.
Previous page
