THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD.
By EVELYN WRENCH.
ON this page, in future, it is proposed to make a survey each week of the English-speaking world outside the British Isles. Sir Auckland Geddes, the British Ambassador at Washington, at a banquet given in his honour by the English-Speaking Union, referred to the lack of American news in the British Press as a whole. But it is not only the lack of American news in the British Press which is criticized. The paucity of comment on Dominion affairs in London has been the theme of many speeches by the delegates at succeeding Imperial Conferences, though it must be admitted that in recent years much more space is devoted by journals like the Times, Morning Post, Manchester Guardian and Daily Telegraph to events in the Dominions and America. How far these criticisms are justified may be a matter of opinion, but the Spectator, anyhow, will continue to do its share in the important task of making the English- speaking nations better known to one another.
Canada has several special links with Mr. Bonar Law's Government, and hence the new Cabinet has had, on the whole, a distinctly favourable " Press " in that Dominion. The fact that the Prime Minister was born in New Brunswick is a source of pride to the Canadian people. The appointment of the Duke of Devonshire as Colonial Secretary has inspired confidence in view of his intimate knowledge of Canadian conditions ; while Mr. Amery, as the result c.,17 many visits to the Dominion, is also well known in Canada.
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Considerable attention has been drawn to the British Empire Exhibition and its committee as the result of the resignation of Mr. Robert Donald, the Chairman of the Publicity Committee, to mark his dis- approval of the policy of the Exhibition authorities in permitting foreign foods to be supplied in the restaurants in the Exhibition. Mr. Donald. cannot be accused of harbouring Targt Reform sympathies or flag-wagging, and his attitude will undoubtedly be approved of in most of the Dominions—Australia and New Zealand have already expressed their desire that only British Empire produce should be used at the Exhibition restaur- ants. The Commonwealth Minister of Customs has cabled from Melbourne thit one of the factors which induced Australia to make a grant of £250,000 towards the Exhibition was the belief that the anticipated 00,000 daily visitors to Wembley- would be fed on Empire produce.
The feeling of those who maintain that only Empire products should be served in the Exhibition restaurants is not to be attributed to . any spirit of parochialism. They realize that no nation can live to itself alone, and they do not subscribe to the ridiculous doctrine that the peoples in the British Empire should trade with themselves alone. They feel, however, that, as the Times states, " an endeavour should be made to stimulate within the British Dominions the production of • the food supplies of which it (Great Britain) stands in need." The advertising possibilities in showing the untravelled Briton the resources of the British Empire by means of a purely Empire-grown menu are very great. There seems to be no reason why. all the food, wine and cigars served should not be pro- duced under the British Flag. People who talk as if this were Praection must have forgotten the object of the Exhibition. It is designed to •shOw what the Empire can do. But the way to accomplish this is by practical example. " You had nothing but Empire food. How did you like it ? "
At the dinner of the Glass Sellers' Company, held at the Carpenters' Hall, two Dominion statesmen spoke on their respective countries. Sir George Foster, recog- nized throughout Canada as one of the Dominion's most eloquent speakers, stated his belief that in fifty years the -Dominion would possess a popula- tion of thirty millions in place of its present nine millions, and that a hundred years hence the Dominion might well have the predominating popula- tion in the British 'World State. Sir Richard Squires, the Prime Minister of Newfoundland, referred with pride to the fact that the country he represented was the oldest - British colony, and that it had the great privilege of being populated almost entirely of British stock. At St. John's the Liverpool steamer is still referred to as " the Home boat."
Does Newfoundland Port still hold what Prohibitionists would call its " bad eminence " ? There was something ironically attractive in the idea that the liquefied sun- shine of Lusitania summers must be matured in the land of mist and cold and turbulent grey waves ! Again, is it true that the Newfoundland Dog has ceased to be able to live on the island, and that hiS heroic acts of deep sea retrieving are but a memory and a romance ? In any case, our first colony and its hardy, independent people remain even if Portless and Dogless, and send us the raw material of journalism.
The British political crisis has been followed with the deepest interest in the American Press. What primarily interests the American public is the policy of the British Government in regard to War debts and Ireland. The payment by Messrs. J. P. Morgan of the first instalment of the British debt, as the Spectator has constantly predicted, has done more for the British fair name . than a thousand after-dinner speeches, while Mr. Bonar Law's statement that the Con- servatives would faithfully carry out the British side of the Anglo-Irish Treaty has given the lie to those friction-mongers in America—hyphenated and otherwise—who declared that the new Government would go back on the plighted word of its predecessors.
Nothing better illustrates the freedom possessed by the nations within the British Commonwealth of self- governing States than the announcement that Canada is about to negotiate direct with the State Department of the United States, without the assistance of the British Foreign Office, in framing the new treaty to regulate naval strength on the Great Lakes. The Rush-Bagot Treaty, signed over a hundred years ago, which now needs revision, possesses a special interest for the two sections of the English-speaking race, for it was the first international armament-limiting conference, and was thus to a certain extent the precursor of the Washington gathering a year ago. The 4,000 mile frontier between the United States and Canada, without a fort along its entire length, is an object-lesson to the world in sanity in internatienal relationships., The official statement for the fiscal year just ended, published by the Treasury Department at Washington, shows that in this period the United States Government collected $38.00 in revenue from each resident in the country. This figure is contrasted, in the American Press, with the per capita cost of government in Great Britain of $95 and of $42 in France:
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