"It must not be supposed, however, that in accepting an alliance as a possible and welcome contingency, anything in the nature of a permanent or general alliance is either desirable or practicable.
"Any attempt to pledge the two nations beforehand to combine defensive and offensive action in all circumstances must {214} inevitably break down and be a source of danger instead of strength. All therefore that the most sanguine advocate of an alliance can contemplate is that the United States and Great Britain should keep in close touch with each other, and that whenever their policy and their interests are identical they should be prepared to concert together the necessary measures for their defence.
"It is to such a course of action that Washington seems to point when he says: 'Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, in a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.'"
Walter Charles Copeland, favouring the proposed Anglo-American
Alliance, says:
"Nor ought we to remain satisfied with the moral alliance which is, and always will be, and probably always would have been, formed at a Pinch between the branches of the Anglo-Saxon race. True, it may be considered by our statesmen in their wisdom that the common interest will be served best by a secret alliance, or a more subtle understanding. Anyway, there is ample scope for the work of a league or association, or for more than one, devoted to the great purpose of correcting misapprehensions and moulding public opinion on both sides."[4]
Sir Charles Dilke sympathises with the movement, but believes there is no chance of a permanent alliance with the United States as matters now stand:
"I have seen," he says, "no inclination expressed across the Atlantic by the responsible leaders of political opinion pointing towards the conclusion of any instrument consecrating so startling a departure from the American policy of the past."[5]
{215}
The same author concludes an article[6] entitled "The Future
Relations of Great Britain and the United States" as follows:
"The issue which lies behind this interesting, but perplexing, study of the future relations of our countries is no less than the decision whether in the second half of the next century the dominant interest in the world is to be Anglo-American or Russian. When I say Anglo-American, I in no way forget the position in the southern hemisphere of our own great colonies; but I include them under the first half of my compound name, Germans may be inclined to take offence at the above hint of prophecy. It is certain that for a long time to come the Prussian army must be an enormous factor in the Continental politics of the Old World. On the other hand, considered as a World-Power, Germany can hardly rank, even in the time of our remote descendants, on a level with the Russian Empire, or with the Anglo-Saxon combination, should the latter come into existence and survive.