The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1919-03-21
BRITISH VIEW OF
CONTROVERSY ON
LEAGUE IS GIVEN
IN LONDON PRESS
Unfortunate That Party
Feeling Should Be Run
ming So High, Declares
Times in Comment
on Question
BY Associated Press

BY ASSOCIATED Press
London, March 20.-(British
Wireless Service. 1.-The league
of nations controversy in the
United States as bearing upon
the English attitude is the sub
ject Of the following connect
in the London Times:
THE English, without distinction Of
party, regard a better understanding with
Americans as the crown of victory 1t
is unfortunate for the ideal that so many
of us on both sides of the Atlantic have
at heart that party feeling should be
running so high just now in America.
and that we, who are working with Pres
ident Wilson in Paris, should furnish the
sticks with which the republicans are be-
laboring the democrats.
I'VE have no wish to fake sides in these
party controversies, and have been at
seine pains to avoid even the suspicion
of doing so. Our sole wish is to work
with the American people in what We be-
leve to be as much their ideals and in
terests as our own.
Wishing that, with whom should we
work but the President of the United
States? That he is also leader of the
democratic party is mere accident to
orr mind, ard if the President had been
a republican we should have been at
exactly tGe same pains to understand his
nCiut q
The Times points out that there were
at the opening of the conference two
general views about the kind of peace
that the world ought to have-the French
view and the American view-and adds
NO views 'f settlement were so clearly
identified with this country as those two
were with France and America. The
chief instrument of the American view
point was the league of nations. This
ideal in one form or another is almost as
CID as international law, andi nearly every
country in the world has at one time or
another contributed, but it's application
TO the problems OF this war came from
America in the first instance.
There is therefore no question at the
conference OF Cur improving policy OF
our own. What we have done was TO
seek to reconcile so far as possible the
French and American views
eOur policy at Paris has been that of
mediator and interpreter, not the re-
suit of selfish calculations or MASTER
full diplomacy.
The truth is that under the consti-
tuition of the league each of the great
powers makes exactly the same sacrI
flee of independence and acquires
world hegemony in exactly that sense,
and does both in the same cause of
world liberty and world peace"
The Liverpool Post says:
Lord Robert Cecil places the Monroe
doctrine in its true light with regard to
the league of nat;ons. He says in effect
that so far from the league being the
death bow to the capital article of Amer
lean political faith, it is the application
of that article on a universal scale.
According to inc draft of the covenant,
tie parties to the league undertake tic
respect and preserve as against external
aggression the territorial integrity and
existing political independence of every
member of the league. The most absolute
supporter of Monroeism could surely de-
sire no more than that
THE independence of both Americas
is guaranteed by an overwhelming ma
iority of the powers, great and small. The
league of nations will give America her
righlful place in the van of the forces OF
civilization that henceforth are to shape
the larger purposes of our race.