Mr. President, it is on this day one of our happiest thoughts that the American and British people, brothers in arms, will continue forever to be brothers in peace. United before by language, traditions, kinship and ideals, there has been set upon our fellowship the sacred seal of common sacrifice.
During the Paris peace conference the New York “Times” of February 13, 1919, in a Paris correspondence, declared that there was complete Anglo-American concord, the program of the conference revealing a fundamental identity of aims and the understanding between English-speaking peoples being never so complete as today. Former Attorney General Wickersham took the lead in proposing to remit England’s enormous debt to us, explaining that we owe them that much for “holding back the Huns,” and the proposition has been received with great favor by many of the 18,000 additional millionaires created by the war, meaning, of course, that England’s burden shall be transferred to the shoulders of the American tax payers.
Among the advocates of the merger are General Pershing, Lord Balfour, Chauncey M. Depew, James M. Beck, Lord Grey and the American bankers and great industrials, like Charles M. Schwab. Surrounded by distinguished men of England, General Pershing, in the Military Committee room of the House of Commons, dwelt with special pathos on the proposed Anglo-Saxon brotherhood. “I feel that the discharged and demobilized soldiers will carry with them into private life,” he said, “the necessity for closer and firmer union, and that we may be united as peoples likewise forever.” Subsequently he was made a Knight of the Bath by King George.
At a meeting of the Pilgrim Society in New York, January 22, 1919, James M. Beck, recently made a “Bencher” in London, after reviewing England’s achievements in the war, said:
England’s triumphs are our triumphs, and our triumphs are England’s triumphs.
Lord Edward Grey, one of the principal figures in the events precedingand throughout the war, was sent as ambassador to the United States to foster the movement. Nominally, the movement is for the preservation of peace, which is represented as seriously imperiled from hour to hour unless the United States and England unite. To this end there is to be “an exchange of journalists” as well as scholars and professors.
“The Nation,” speaking of an address by Admiral Sims at the American Luncheon Club, on March 14, 1919, says:
Admiral Sims referred to his remarks at the Guildhall several years ago, when he declared that Great Britain and the United States would be found together in the next war. Further, he said that in 1910, while cruising in European waters, he submitted a secret report that in his opinion war could not be put off longer than four years. During the war a German diplomatic official stated that there was an understanding between Great Britain and the United States whereby they would stand together if either went to war with Germany. A similar statement recently came to light in this country from a Dutch source. Professor Roland G. Usher, in his “Pan-Germanism,” explicitly declares that, probably before the summer of the year 1897, “an understanding was reached that in case of a war begun by Germany or Austria for the purpose of executing Pan-Germanism, the United States would promptly declare in favor of England and France, and would do her utmost to assist them.” We do not attach too great importance to any of these statements; yet we should like to see this matter ventilated. If such an understanding was in force, did President Wilson know of it before Mr. Balfour and M. Viviani made their visit? Until three days before the war, the British Parliament knew nothing of a secret engagement that bound them hand and foot to France, and had been in force eight years; an engagement, moreover, that not only eight weeks before, they had been assured did not exist. Admiral Sims’s remark gains interest from the fact that the regular diplomatic technique of such engagements is by way of “conversations” between military and naval attachés of the coquetting governments. In his book called “How Diplomats Make War,” Mr. Francis Neilson, a member of the war-Parliament, traces the course of the military conversations authorized by the French and English Governments, and shows their binding effect upon foreign policy. We should be much interested in hearing from Admiral Sims again; and we believe that a healthy and vigorous public curiosity about this subject would by no means come amiss. (“Nation.”)
The Lord High Chancellor, Viscount Finlay, after saying that “a wholly new era has opened between England and America,” remarked that he was now at liberty to tell Ambassador Davis that it was he, as Attorney General, who had drafted all the British notes exchanged with the United States, and went on with a smile:
“Ambassador Page used to say to me, ‘My dear friend, don’t hurry with the notes; they are not pressing.’”—New York “Globe.”