It will be a great pity if nothing results from
the admirable suggestion thrown out by Sir Evelyn Wrench in The Times before Christmas that, as some recognition of the immense generosity of the American people in providing the Marshall Aid with which we are now happily able to dispense, this country should present to the United States one of the four original copies of Magna Carta still in existence. There is something really imaginative here. Magna Carta, after all, belongs in a sense to the Anglo-Saxon element in the United States as much as to the Anglo-Saxon element in these islands, for it goes back far beyond the point at which the great current of Anglo-Saxon history divided into two streams. Magna Carta was not quite the bulwark of democratic liberties that it is sometimes supposed to be, but it is a unique landmark in-the history of Western civilisation. The presentation of a copy of the historic document to the Library of Congress would give as much satisfac- tion to the donors as it undoubtedly would to the recipients.
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