Boston Common Sense
It is a great misfortune, but one for which in present conditions there is no remedy, that owing to space-limitations in the daily papers some of the most important speeches delivered in the United States go unreported here. That is peculiarly unfortunate in the case of a striking declaration made in Boston last month by Mr. Harry Hawkins, Chief of the Division of Commercial Policy and Trade Agreements in the Department of State. It constituted a powerful and cogent appeal for the utmost freedom of international trade after the war, and more especially for sympathetic recogni- tion by the United States, in connexion with the Lend-Lease and Mutual Aid Agreements, of the position in which Great Britain will find herself, with her shipping heavily reduced, her foreign investments sold and her manufacture for export limited by the urgent needs of the home-market in the vital months and years immediately after the war. Mr. Hawkins recalls that under the Lend-Lease Act repayment to the United States may be "in kind or property or any other direct or indirect benefit," and he indicates plainly that such " benefit " could take the form of agree- ments for the destruction of trade barriers and the promotion of international trade generally. The conclusion of a speech which ought on its merits to be circulated verbatlm here is that
We must think of Britain less as a competitor and keep an eye on Britain as a customer, and bear always in mind that a prosperous Britain, able to import from the rest of the world, is a maker of other customers for us. Britain must regard us in the same way, and each of us must look at all other countries in the same light.
Such a declaration deserves the warmest response on this side, the more so since it is a palpable and courageous challenge to powerful vested interests in the United States. •
