New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-04-24
Arthur James BaHour

Great Britain. in sending Mr.. Balfour to
the United States, has sent one Of her choic-
est spirits. As an Englishman | certainly
could not wish my country 10 be better rep
resented at the Washington councils Of war
than by this brilliant son Of Scotland. He
brings to the conferences that will determine
the general scheme Of American cooperation
with the Allies precisely the qualities that
are most likely to make them fruitful
broad, acute, dispassionate mind and sound
grip on the fundamentals OF naval and mill
tary policy.
The problem Of defence in its largest as
poets what one may call the craftsmanship
Of strategy has for many years been one Of
the chief preoccupations Of his busy and
sweeping intelligence.
It was he who thirteen or fourteen years
ago-he was then Prime Minister-started
the Committee of Imperial Defence, one Of
the most useful bodies in the whole hierarchy
of ohicialdom; and, though he ceased to pre-
side over it when his party was turned out
Of Office, he was constantly invited by the
Liberals to assist at its deliberations, so
ligh was the value attached by his political
opponents to his judgment and experience
Perhaps there is no British leader now living
who has given such consistently hard and
penetrating thought TO the naval and mill
tary position and possibilities Of the Brit
ish Empire; and his grasp of principles has,
of course, been immensely fortified since the
war began by the eighteen months he spent
as First Lord of the Admiralty
His Extraordinary Equipment
In addition. since last December he has
been Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and must
therefore have accumulated great mass Of
information on questions that have for
President Wilson and his Cabinet a new and
pertinent interest. II would be hard indeed
TO imagine a single essential point that is
likely to arise in these memorable discus
sions on which Mr.. Balfour's opinion will
not be both helpful and profound. Except
for the technical details, he might almost as
we'll have left his staff of secretaries and
experts at home.
This is. believe, the first time that the
cx-Premier has visited the United States.
But America and American conditions and
the American future have long engaged his
speculative interest. He was, think, the
first British statesman to foresee and to de-
clare that for the United States the days Of
aloofness were drawing to an end, and that
whether she liked it or not an active and
commanding part in world politics would Ill
timatey be thrust upon her. | remember.
but cannot now lay my hands on, speech of
his. delivered some twenty years ago, in
which he sketched out this prospect and wei
coined IT,
I have never once talked with him since
the outbreak of the war that he did not
eagerly canvass its reactions upon American
thought and policy and the possibility that it
might draw the English speaking peoples
closer together. He has been wholeheart-
eddy anxious that America should appreciate
the spirit in which and the causes for which
Great Britain had taken up arms and the
reasons and justification for such actions or
policies of hers might seem at first sight
to run counter to American interests. He
wrote himself a most persuasive pamphlet
explaining and defending the Orders in
Council and our whole use of sea power. He
wrote another one that in a few pages de-
molished the German rawlings over "the free
com of the seas" and extracted from that
mostly empty phrase its true kernel of mean
ing. He wrote a third as a sort of footnote
10 the terms of peace which. at President
wilson's request, the Allies outlined last De-
cember. and the American papers rightly
hailed it as a masterpiece Of cogent elucida-
ton
For American Readers
All these writings were addressed eXclu-
sively TO American readers. They were a
proof of the enormous value he has attached
throughout this crisis to American good will
to the duty of setting the facts before the
Judgment of the American people. To the
American correspondents in London he has
been uniformly accessible. Indeed, some of
the best summaries that have been written
on the work of the British navy-summaries
that Mahan would have been proud to sign
have appeared from Mr.. Balfour's pen in the