TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. FORSTER ON AN ANGLO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE.
IF Mr. Forster should ever become the head of a British Administration, his farewell speech to his American friends, delivered before the Union League Club of New York on December 14, may prove a most important utterance. The central thought which runs through his speech from end to end is that in the near future the best ally for Great Britain will be found in the United States, that not only would war between the two countries be a calamity—and a calamity so great as to justify the "sublime humiliation" of arbitration— but that friendliness ought gradually to ripen into alliance, until, for certain purposes, the whole of the English-speaking peoples should form one vast Confederation leagued together for self-defence, and for securing to the defenceless races of mankind humanity and justice. Mr. Forster declares that this alliance has never been out of his thoughts, and that now that Slavery has disappeared, it seems to him to be becoming yearly more possible to arrange it. With populations so strongly bound together as those of England and the Union, with Govern- ments so identical in intent, though not in form, with tasks so very similar—the heaviest of them being the mild and peaceful government of dark-skinned races—and with commercial policies which will soon be so much alike, he sees no reason why the two branches of the one people whose power, and language, and fleets are covering earth, should not be drawn together by ties stronger than those of mere friendliness, why they should not form an alliance with definite ends and adequate means at its disposal. That is the purpose of a speech necessarily lengthy and full of local remarks of less interest for English- men, and it is impossible to deny to this purpose a certain fascination. A League of the English-speaking Peoples, if it could only be cordially accepted and skilfully directed, would be almost strong enough to protect the political future of humanity. It would, for geographical reasons, be utterly beyond attack from any first-class Power, unless China should ever become one, as many observers think quite possible ; and except in India, it could be attacked only by fleets, which eighty millions of men always foremost in naval warfare or maritime enterprise could with no great or exhausting effort brush away from the seas. It could keep up, at small ex- pense, an army quite large enough, if animated by a common will, to guarantee its joint dominion, and could offer within its enormous territories a safe asylum to the world. It would be open to such a League without dangerous interventions to ensure per- manent peace among nearly half mankind, or if it could rise to that height of self-sacrifice, to insist that before war was pro- claimed the world's disputes should be referred to its tribunal. The sword of the English-speaking peoples thrown into the scale of any suffering nation would be too heavy a weight for any oppressor, however powerful, finally to resist. The sense of that fact would be so keen, that no nation un- attacked would run the risk, and ten years after the forma- tion of the League, Britain, the American Union, Australia, the Islands of America and the Pacific, and all Southern Asia might be slumbering in an unbroken peace, under the blue flag of the English-speaking Federation. It is a magnificent dream, and we cannot wonder that it commends itself to a statesman who describes himself to Americans as the "most practical" of mankind, but who, on the philanthropic side of his head at all events, has much of the imaginative fervour essential to the composition of an energetic Liberal.
But while we admire the conception, and would gladly be- lieve in its realisation, we cannot conceal from ourselves that as a practical policy it is still a counsel of perfection, a dream of the far future. The Union is not weighted enough for any alliance to be borne yet. We do not think that even now, though England is still ruled by men impatient of the American example, and unable to believe that life would be tolerable Avithout our social hierarchy, the proposal of a hearty Anglo- American alliance would be received in the United King- dom with any serious disfavour. The sense that Britain is overweighted, that her duties crush her down, that she needs aid, or at least friendliness, from some section of the world in the performance of her Titanic tasks, has ffitered down very deeply among her people,—is the root of their dislike to new enterprises, of their desire for a renewal of the French alliance, of their helpless uncertainty as to the foreign policy to which in the new conditions of the world it is expedient to adhere. Alliance with the Union, if once accepted by our
statesmen, might easily be made acceptable to the people ; and the first sign that it was real, the first strain, however slight, cheerfully borne on behalf of the new scheme, would solidify it into a working policy. There is no repugnance here among the new electors to Americans as such, and so strong a feeling in favour of all English-speaking countries that the dissatisfied will emigrate nowhere else. Every scheme to settle colonists who speak English in a "foreign" State, be it Spain, or Brazil, or Spanish America, has been more or less a failure, sometimes a. discreditable failure, and has either been abandoned, or in the single exceptional case, the settlement of Texas, has ended in a revolution and the rise of the English to the top. That there is no special fancy for the Queen's dominions is proved by the multitudes who for years continuously have flocked over to the States, tribes so large that, had they precipitated themselves upon Australia, she would already be the greatest State south of the Equator ; or if they had settled in Buenos: Ayres or Brazil, those vast territories would already be ruled by English legislators. An Anglo-American alliance is possible here, if the leaders on either side chose to accept it, but we are more doubtful of the opinion within the Union. The men of the States do not yet feel burdened by the world. The orb of their fate is not too vast for then. In their history they have never made a serious alliance, or have had anything to fear- from any neighbour except Great Britain. They have no task to perform to which they feel themselves almost incompetent, for the Black race, as a race, has never ffiled them, as a race, with apprehension. They have none of that weary sense of endless responsibilities reaching over the whole world which, but for the deadening effect of habit, would make every day's: Times a terror to English politicians, lest on opening it they should find some new danger, or duty, or cause of expense had arisen, three, six, or twelve thousand miles away from home. They call themselves and feel themselves "a young people,' and though the epithet is misplaced, for they are as old as we are—or nearly so, for our imperial position dates from Plassey, and it is that position which has formed our modern statesmen—they are at least free from the cares which, in most cases, weigh so heavily on the middle- aged. What have we to offer them in return for an alliance. which, to be real at all, must involve some sacrifices which we, trained by a long experience, make patiently, but under which Americans are still restless in the extreme ? They have been re- cently at war, yet they will not keep up an Army equal to the maintenance of common order, and their vast South-west frontier- is at the present moment worse governed than the English Border before Elizabeth's reign. They have interests to pro- tect in every sea, and are as susceptible of maritime insult an ourselves, yet they will not, or at all events do not, keep up a fleet able to contend with the Spanish fleet assembled on their own coasts. With every climate and almost every pro- duction within their own dominion, with forty millions of people and with a power of calling up armies to which the whole world pays a certain deference, they feel so safe, that apart from any incalculable surge of emotion, or new and unsus- pected danger, or novel determination to undertake some enormous task—such, for instance, as a ruling Protectorate in South America—it is difficult to conceive how they are to be- convinced of the utility of alliance with a Power whose great- ness and objects and fears their masses scarcely as yet com- prehend. And yet until they are convinced, and heartily convinced, at least as convinced as we are, no alliance could be more than an agreement not to quarrel with each other with- out reason. Mr. Forster may see reason to doubt the difficulty, and we see one favourable element in the scene, the wonderful docility with which Americans acquiesce on foreign questions in the action of their Government, even when opposed to their own momentary temper; but we fear he is still far, very far, from the realisation of his hopes. His speech, however, will do good not only in America, where it has been rightly re- ceived as an exposition of a deep and genuine friendliness, but in Europe, where men need to be reminded that the isolation of this country continues mainly by her own choice; that there is a world with which England is in full communication, but to which the success of Madfahon or the policy of Bismarck, the preparations of Berlin or the intrigues of Rome, are not the only matters of moment or of interest.
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