Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-12-28
GLANDS ACROSS THE SEA" AS
THE VIVID LONDON SPECTACLE
President Wilson and the Two Georges Chief
Actors in a New Version OF an
Old FaYorite

FNHE cheers that rang out Tor Mr..
l. Wilson in London and the dramatic
briliancy of his reception there are not
to be appraised by ordinary standards.
The chief executive Of great republic
will be warmly welcomed wherever he
goes, and there are even ntimations that
he would hear "hochs" in Germany.
But what is happening in the British
capital is enriched with meaning which
externals of display could ever fifty
register. Rulers on foreign visits have
been acclaimed before. Gorgeous pa
geants have been staged and all the
studious formalities of grandeur scrupu-
lously observed. Those who witnessed
them, however, have more often been
dazzled than enlightened. History is re-
plete with records of such empty shows,
but here at last is novelty on its books.
For two nations, whose very intimacy,
ties of ideals, language, law, literature,
purposes and, to large extent, blood
have sharpened their critical faculties to
a Damascene edge, have Stunned the de-
lusion of mutual flattery as sedulously as
two brothers. Concord by the hearth
stone, praise in the household is inher-
emily of unimpeachable sincerity. And
that is precisely why the significance of
the current happenings in London IS so
vital to all who speak the English tongue.
To the American, quite apart from
the least antiquated nonsense about
royalty, there is thrilling import in the
fact that the elected executive of this
nation has been a guest in the home of
a monarch whose ancestor was George
III. To an Englishman the condescen-
sion with which his forebears, though
aiming for democracy themselves, re-
garded an infant and secessionist expert
ment in that field for many years, is
suddenly revealed as faulty. The last
filaments of veil between two nations
so closely bound that they achieved the
apparent paradox of knowing each other
intimately and yet in some ways not at
all is suddenly whisked away. The con-
cord that was inherent is disclosed with
out the embarrassments, which were
chiefly superficial. And in the new har-
mony, much more important than that
swiftly created by the common perils of
the war, can be envisaged a force of
moral rectitude and an armor of liberty
of transcendent consequence to mankind.
The century and more of misconcep-
tions behind this event was perhaps in
dispensable to render the ultimate
achievement of enduring quality. Both
nations were working out their expert
ments, both stumbled into blind alleys,
both were harassed by naIrowness and
Toryism, manifestations Of which, though
to an infinitely smaller degree, still
exist. Britain with her small-minded
Lord North, her unperceptive Palmerston
and Russell, has no monopoly of regrets.
There are lions tail-twisting Jurors in
our own story which look rather unrea-
sonable in the light of saner judgment.
We can best understand the wonderful
role which America and Britain seem
destined to play in remaking civilization
by recalling Pitt, Burke, Canning, Golden
and Bright. AS England exchanges
courtesies she can comprehend today
how consistently the great figures in the
American chronicle accord in spirit and
intent with those among her own fore
most statesmen whom she is proudest to
remember.
There are alarmists today-not wholly
| harmful, since such persons serve a salu-
| tary purpose as safeguards-who inter
pret the accord Of Anglo-American in
terests, consistently manifested since the
Spanish War, as something yet delicate
and illusory. But the facts, so far as
we can see them, emphatically refute
pessimsm. Divisions there must be in
| the Peace Conference or else no neces-
sity for the meeting would exist; but the
superb factor in that assemblage seems
certain to be the union of purposes, the
zeal for democracy founded on right and
justice in which America and England
are frankly combined as never before.
The war which has resulted in this fusion
of national paths would not have been
| lOuBHJ III vain "elc ho otner VI us luedIS
attained.
The President and King George I'M
questionably make a piquant pair,
dramatically suggesting that history has
reshuffled all her cards and begun the
game again. But the picturesqueness
and all the ringing revelry of the cur
rent episodes in London are but the
trappings of the play. Under them the
vital currents are stirring. The su-
premely important interviews of Wilson
with Lloyd George, Balfour, Asquith.
Bryce and the other British statesmen