Functional socialism

WE AND THEY 169

or sporting pages. It is very different in the United States. Whether they agree or disagree, they understand. And their Press criticises with the freedom of family speech. They assume a family relationship.

A striking instance of this happened quite recently. Senator Key Pittmann, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of Congress, in a widely reported speech, called for a joint American and British nayal demonstration in Chinese waters. It was to be a plain hint to Japan. Had any statesmen of like prominence in France, Italy, Germany or Russia made a similar declaration, the European dovecotes would instantly have been in a state of flurry and flutter. American and British readers were not in the least disturbed by the Senator’s speech. Whatever else they thought, it did not seem incongruous. This is one of many signs that in world affairs Great Britain must always be closer to America than to Europe. It is a cultural or spiritual relationship, although, of course, our economic systems are practically the same. When Venezuela threatened trouble, the Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and a thousand other cultural influences, common and peculiar to both countries, promptly and contemptuously stamped out the war sparks.

This European misunderstanding of Great Britain —or vice versa, if you will—is one of the great tragedies of history. It ante-dates the Reformation, which in England took on a form and content which Luther would never have recognized, much less understood. For it was infused with the genius of