An English View of Anglo-American Relations

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NOT the least disappointing feature of the disappointing aftermath of the war has been the failure of the Anglo-American relationship to develop according to promise. America's entry into the war, it had been proclaimed at the time, would end the era of her isolation: henceforward the Democracy of the New World would work hand in hand with the Democracies of the Old World for the regeneration of mankind. Especially was there to be the closest cooperation between the English-speaking nations. For a few fleeting months before and after the armistice it looked as though this vision of the reversal of Canning's famous phrase was about to be realized. But now four years after the end of the war the United States and Great Britain, despite joint sacrifices, joint promises, and, if their people would only realize it, joint interests, seem nearly as far apart as ever they were. On both sides of the Atlantic there is disillusionment; in the United States it has produced aloofness, in England a sort of weary impatience.

The British are and always will be intensely grateful for American partnership during the war. They realize that they could not have carried on during the last two years of the struggle without the generous financial aid of the American Government and people; they appreciate and admire all that was done in the United States in the way of food-saving and ship-building; they know that Marshal Foch would have lacked the man-power to press victory home in the autumn of 1918 had it not been for the American armies so triumphantly extemporized...