amounts thus appropriated.' The War has interfered with the planned celebration, and perhaps it is for the best.

The promoters of the movement obviously intended to celebrate the Hundred Years' Peace by improving the relations between the British and American peoples, and they were prepared to spend money lavishly for that purpose. But would they have achieved their aim by giving large commissions to a number of sculptors, architects, and monumental masons, who might only have succeeded in producing monumental eyesores, and by creating on the Niagara frontier a park and a toll-free Peace Bridge? The Niagara is the American Blackpool. It is visited every year by more than a million cheap trippers, who are conveyed there at a very small price in railway trains which are crowded to their utmost capacity. Apart from the two railway bridges there is already an excellent passenger bridge over the Niagara which people can cross by electric tram for the modest sum of ten cents. Did the promoters of the peace celebrations seriously believe that they could bridge the gulf which until lately unfortunately still divided the British and American nations by constructing promiscuously and at very large expense a number of imposing and possibly unbeautiful stone monuments and a totally unnecessary bridge, which would have no practical benefit except that of saving the trifling sum of ten cents per head to swarms of hilarious excursionists, who, anxious to see the sights on the other side, or to get something to eat, would rush across the toll-free bridge without giving a moment's thought to its symbolical meaning? Were not the excellent people on the Peace Celebration Committees bent upon spending their money and their energy in the wrong direction?

On Christmas Eve the angels sang On earth peace, goodwill toward men.' The Peace of Ghent was most auspiciously signed on Christmas Eve, and the idea of celebrating its centenary by taking steps which would increase the goodwill between the two great branches of

the Anglo-Saxon race and secure their peace for all time was excellent. However, experience teaches us that peace and goodwill between nations cannot be secured by wasting money on stone monuments and bridges and that international agitation by private committees does little to bring nations together. From the invasion by William the Conqueror in 1066 to the surrender of Fashoda in 1898 England and France have passionately hated one another and have almost incessantly been at war. Yet to-day France and Great Britain are excellent friends. How has that marvellous and almost incredible change been brought about? By the Anglo-French Agreement of April 8, 1904, concluded between Lord Lansdowne and Monsieur Delcassé, which settled all outstanding questions and abolished all friction between the two nations, and by the conclusion of an understanding whereby the two countries have resolved to support one another in case of need. Through the action of their leading statesmen, France and Great Britain have discovered that they need one another and that they ought, in their own interest, to support one another. The longcontinued efforts of well-meaning individuals in France and Great Britain to bring the two countries together proved fruitless. It is worth noting that France and Great Britain had become firm friends long before the great War, although many of the text-books used in the French schools still described Great Britain as the hereditary enemy of France, and although many of the books used in the British schools reciprocated the compliment.

After all, the influence of well-disposed private individuals, of bodies such as Chambers of Commerce, and of the schools is very much overrated. Nowadays the people receive their political education not from schoolmasters and social leaders but from the Press. The newspapers exercise a far more powerful influence upon public opinion than school and society combined. Diplomacy, the actions of statesmen, not schoolmasters and social leaders, brought France and Great Britain together overnight, and soon the

French and British nations unlearnt what they had been taught about one another in the schools, and learnt to respect and trust one another, and, in case of need, to defend one another.

If statesmanship was able to bring together France and Great Britain, two nations of different race, different ideas, different habits, different thought, and different speech, which have fought one another almost unceasingly during nine centuries, it should surely not be impossible to bring the United States and Great Britain once more together by the conclusion of a second and final peace treaty, by a treaty whereby the two great Anglo-Saxon nations might pledge themselves to support one another in perpetuity in case of a great emergency, by a treaty which would most fitly be concluded on the next anniversary of the Treaty of Ghent, and which would secure their peace and security practically for all time. That would, I venture to assert, be its most appropriate celebration. I shall endeavour to show the necessity of such a treaty in the following pages, but before doing so I think I ought to deal briefly with the causes which until recently have kept the two nations asunder.

The fact that Great Britain and the United States have been at war has been almost forgotten in this country, but it is keenly remembered in America. That is only natural. In the course of her long and chequered history Great Britain has been at war with many powerful nations, but the United States have had only one great foreign war, and, owing to their geographical position, they have had hitherto a possible enemy only in that nation which is supreme at sea. If the American history-books had not contained long and highly-coloured accounts of America's fight for freedom against England's tyranny,' and of America's heroism and England's treachery,' they would have made very dull and uninspiring reading indeed.

National patriotism demands to be inflamed by the heroic deeds of one's ancestors. The Americans have every reason

to be proud of their fight against England, and it is only right and proper that they have made the most of it and so strengthened their spirit of patriotism and of nationalism. However, although all Americans are proud of their victory over England, a large and constantly growing number of them have begun to recognise that the English nation is not a nation of tyrants and of inhuman monsters, that at the time of the American Revolution not all the wrong was on the side of England and all the right on that of the American Colonists, that the war was caused rather by mutual misunderstandings than by the evil dispositions of the English Government and the English people, and therefore they feel a little ashamed of the patriotic exuberance of some of their countrymen.

Nations are usually welded together by war. Without the Anglo-American war there might have been American States, but these would scarcely have formed a firmly knit American State and an American nation. Besides, no great State, and especially no great democratic State, and no great federation of States, has ever been established without war. In every family of strong, healthy, and high-spirited boys there are fights. However, these do not lead to eternal enmity or to a permanent estrangement, but to increased mutual respect and to a better understanding. There have been great fraternal fights in Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, France, and in the United States themselves, and it was only natural that there should have been such a fight between the United States and Great Britain. Lastly, the losses and sufferings which the AngloAmerican war caused to the Americans have been much exaggerated. When I was in the United States I was seriously informed by eminent and competent men that the yearly celebration of the Fourth of July, the day of the Declaration of Independence, when patriotism impels Americans to let off in the streets fireworks and revolvers, had in the course of time claimed a heavier hecatomb of life than the Anglo-American war.

In the American school books Great Britain is usually described as the hereditary enemy of the United States. It is true that much bitterness against the United States prevailed in England long after the conclusion of the AngloAmerican Peace Treaty. It was only natural that the loss of our greatest possession created abiding resentment, especially as Americans kept open the sore by numerous provocations and by frequent endeavours to damage Great Britain and Canada. Of course provocation met with counter provocation. However, it should in fairness be remembered in the United States that, notwithstanding all mutual misunderstandings and disputes which have taken place in the past, Great Britain has more than once acted as America's good friend. Great Britain has preserved the United States more than once from the intended intervention of European Powers, she has probably preserved them from dangerous wars, and she has undoubtedly been responsible for the promulgation and the defence of the Monroe Doctrine which has established the principle America for the Americans.' The fact that Great Britain was responsible for the declaration of the Monroe Doctrine is so important and is at the same time so little known both in Great Britain and in the United States that it is worth while to give briefly the secret history of that doctrine, which has become the fundamental principle and the sheet anchor of America's foreign policy.

After the Napoleonic Wars a reign of reaction began on the Continent of Europe. The Holy Alliance strove to destroy the democratic governments and institutions which the revolutionary period had called into being throughout the world, and to introduce a universal despotism. At Verona, on November 22, 1822, the Powers which had fought against Napoleon signed a secret treaty, to which, however, only the names of Metternich (Austria), Chateaubriand (France), Bernstorff (Prussia), and Nesselrode (Russia) were appended, for England refused to be a party.