SAVING THE ALLIANCE
argument that foreigners should keep out of American politics and leave Americans to sort out their own mistakes ? In every crisis of their foreign policy in the past thirteen years the Americans have emerged with the right answer. It is at least arguable that they can work their way through the present crisis to the enlightened solution once more, if only we will stop jeering from the sidelines and representing ourselves as the only sensible Power on earth. We shall not be at the mercy of the latest pseudo-friendly gesture from the Comniunist Powers or of the propaganda of charlatans and men of ill-will in our own midst. But in the Short run we must have careful, purposeful and quick action. We must accept the sound American doctrine that nothing less than tangible concessions on the part of the Communists, nothing short of the abandonment of aggression in Indo-China and elsewhere, can justify concessions on our own part. We Must drop the bad practice of wasting time waiting for con- ferences—time that could be better spent in private and less formal negotiation. And we must remember that Anglo- American co-operation, like any other form of voluntary asso- ciation, can only be maintained by a continuous process of mutual adjustment. For if we fail to remember it we shall find ourselves once again, as we have been during the past month, at the mercy of those—the pro-Communists, the con- genital anti-Americans, the half-baked and the muddle-headed —to whom any misunderstanding between Britain and the United States is the excuse for a new attempt to break the alliance which should be our sheet anchor.
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