There is not the slightest sign we are without ideas, either of truth or beauty, of keeping faith or self-sacrifice. America should know that quite well, when she makes up her annual accounts and notices the contribution she draws from our derelict and hopeless land. So long as there is vision, beauty, truth, keeping faith, so long will old England be able to trust in God.-The English Methodist Recorder.

As it is the British pound can look the dollar squarely in the eye, and when we hesitate or fail to forward our instalments then America and the world can believe Colonel Harvey's estimate of us. The best way the Americans could show their sympathy and avert the downfall which they think is approaching for us, would be to fix our account at the sum actually due them. That would be practical sympathy, but even without it it will be a long time yet before we reach that stage when the brokers have to be called in and Macaulay's New Zealander views the ruins of St. Paul's from a broken arch of London Bridge.-The Greenoch Telegraph.

We have no reason to doubt that Mr. George Harvey, the former American Ambassador in London, is a good friend of this country, though we have always regretted that he did not succeed in persuading the Washington Government to give more practical proofs of friendship in the settlement of the debt question. . . . If Mr. Harvey would emphasise and reiterate his appeal to the American people to show their appreciation of our "financial integrity" in a practical manner, instead of representing us as a nation whose decline and fall has begun, and suggesting that we are faced with the danger of default in our debt payments, he would earn our gratitude. It is in America's power to afford this country great relief merely by obeying the voice of conscience, which cannot fail to tell her that she is at present levying almost extortionate toll upon us for having helped her and her friends to win the war, and for having held the enemy during the years when she was "too proud to fight."-The Cardiff Times.

In the main, Mr. Harvey's statements are absolutely true. This country is carrying financial burdens that would break any other nation. Her industries, such as coal mining, are struggling for survival with the aid of State subsidy and in other respects Harvey relates acknowledged facts. When, however, he declares that Great Britain's period of productivity has passed and that her sole function in future is that of middleman, he enters the precarious realms of prophecy.-Hal O'Flaherty, London, correspondent of The Chicago Daily News.

I do not doubt the figures and data Colonel Harvey has published. I do not doubt that they are true. But figures prove nothing of the spirit of men. It is true that England is poorly off at present, but her men are young and not

old. They have vision and are even learning from you how to come to better things.-W. S. Crawford, Chairman, British Empire Commission.

Mr. Harvey has apparently taken as his text a speech made by Sir Esme Howard, but the influence of some of our home-keeping pessimists is also to be discerned in his jeremiad concerning the future of Great Britain. And it must be said that, to judge by the telegraphic summary, the comment of the British Embassy in Washington by no means meets the case. "Fortunately," it says, "since those words (the speech of Sir Esme Howard) were uttered the outlook has improved greatly owing to the re-establishment of security by the resolu tions of the Locarno treaties. We may now look forward to the restoration of confidence and credit throughout Europe, and to the re-establishment of European markets, which should in some months alter so much for the better Britain's economic prospects and have already begun to do so to a remarkable degree." If this were all that could be said, we could not blame the average American for concluding that Mr. Harvey is right.-The London Evening Standard.

Precisely why Esme Howard confided to the New World his belief that, in due course, Britain would be too poor to keep up the payments on her debt to the United States, I really cannot say. On this text, Colonel Harvey preached a discourse in which, not in anger but in sorrow, he expatiated on Britain's doom. The fact is, that Harvey is anxious to avoid the embarrassment inflicted on poor Page of a window in Westminster Abbey.-London Truth.

Most people will applaud the spirit shown by Mr. George Harvey, formerly American Ambassador in London, who has written in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW what is virtually an appeal to his countrymen to lighten the burden imposed on this country by the discharge of its war debt to the United States. At the same time we are certain that Mr. Harvey's view of the present and future of Great Britain is unduly pessimistic. It has been characteristic of American Ambassadors that they have come here as friends, and grown to be great friends. But it is possible for a man to hold the position of Ambassador without becoming fully acquainted with the resources of the country in which he acts for his own Government.-The Yorkshire Telegraph.

If Mr. Harvey has taken at its face value all that has been said by Labour of Capitalists and by Capitalists of Labour he might readily assume that industrially and commercially we are rapidly going to the dogs. We do not usually take a man at his word when he says he is a miserable sinner. But when partners in enterprise will persist in calling each other dunderheads and incompetents the world is not over eager to do business with them. As a specimen of profitable "publicity" it leaves much room for improvement.-The Priestgate Echo.

It is not often that a man whose impending death has been announced by his doctor sits down to a chatty conversation about the nature and date of his end. But that has been the reception given to the gloomy bulletin about the approaching downfall of England signed by Mr. Harvey, formerly American Ambassador in London. For the most part Englishmen have taken it lightheartedly. But it does not follow that they are right. They may be living in a fool's paradise. Mr. Harvey, with the kindly object of exciting American sympathy on our behalf, may not be utterly wrong. When he says that "England's period of productivity has passed," he evidently exceeds the truth. But if he had said "England's period of productivity will pass if she does not soon take heroic measures to improve production," his remark would have been strictly true.-The London Daily Chronicle.

Colonel George Harvey is an experienced journalist, and we should not take too seriously his latest attempt to give his readers what they enjoy, a strong dose of sentimental Pessimism as to the future of Great Britain. It is only his reputation as former Ambassador to the Court of St. James, and as one who played a distinguished part in the negotiations that led up to the funding of the British debt to the United States, that makes his article in his own NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW of some consequence. . . . But we must make a vigorous protest against these unwarranted assumptions of senility in our economic affairs, and would with all politeness remind Colonel Harvey of the fate of the cocksure young man who ventured to say: "You are old, Father William."-The London Financial News.

Side by side with this candid talk comes the opinion of a famous surgeon, Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane. "Prohibition is a farce," he said. "In America you can get liquor everywhere." Sir William knows. He has just returned. The only difference in the quality of the liquor that the distinguished surgeon noted was that the good stuff was sold to the rich and the wood spirit to the poor. "I have seen more drunken people in America in a month than I have seen in England for the last two or three years," said Sir William. I leave Colonel Harvey and his middlemen theory at that.-The Liverpool Courier.

The disposition in some quarters to receive with a certain impatience the lectures of President Coolidge upon conditions in Europe, and the compassionate assurances of ex-Ambassador Harvey that, as a great producing country, we are now "down and out," is very readily intelligible. The truth is that in this country we are rather sadly concerned about the future and fate of the United States with its millions of cranks, its millions of unassimilated aliens, its ten million negroes, and its hundreds of millions of gold in reserve. The President and Mr. Harvey will do well to look at home. As for ourselves, we are coming along very nicely, thank you.-The Yorkshire Observer.

AMERICAN COMMENT

"Must Not Happen at All"

Edward S. Martin in Life

What will happen about the farmers will happen by the operation of economic factors; what will happen about the schools will happen when we get sense enough to make it happen, but what Colonel Harvey sees on the way to happen to England must not happen at all.

It should be recalled that the debt agreement with England was made while Colonel Harvey was Ambassador in London and heartily backed by him. It was probably not precisely as he would have wished it. The rate of interest is too high; he would have had it lower; but he was strongly in favor of the funding of the debt and managed a good part of the negotiations to that end. Now in the NORTH AMERICAN, starting with the British Ambassador's recent disclosure that the time might come soon when the United Kingdom would be unable to meet its financial obligations to the United States, Colonel Harvey prints the figures on the subject, discloses the current state of British trade, turns the light on the alarming prospects that seem to await it and says in effect but not in so many words that the British are paying us too much money. "No one country," he says, "has ever had so huge a stake in another as the United States has to-day in Great Britain." We have a money stake, of course, and he speaks of that, but what he stresses is our obligation to her for upholding the standard of integrity among nations.

The Colonel may put it that way if it suits him. Others may base our concern about England on different grounds so vital and various that they can safely be left unenumerated. The real fact that Colonel Harvey brings out is that the flow of the life blood of England into the veins of the United States ought not to go on-at least not at anything like the present rate until the affairs of the United Kingdom are in a far more prosperous state. One of the most urgent duties of the hour, probably the most urgent, is to check that flow.

America cannot but feel a genuine sympathy for the British people. Should England slip, and become a second-rate Power, it would seriously affect the United States, the greatest Anglo-Saxon nation of the world, but needing the collaboration of Great Britain in the age that is dawning.-The Lexington Leader.

It is a situation in which the United States is interested on many counts: Blood ties, similarity of traditions, institutions, ideals, political fundmentals and, in a way, the joint guardianship of human liberty, equality and peaceful relations. But those of us who reject all that as mere hands-across-the-sea

twaddle will at least acknowledge our interest as creditor in one-time Merrie England's destiny.-The St. Louis Post Dispatch.

The point raised by Colonel Harvey is well taken. He deals with figures that are official and show the financial condition of Great Britain. The facts are as they are. Great Britain will undoubtedly work out her problem. She is, however, facing financial difficulties which indicate the foolishness of any plan for tax reduction in this country based on possible payments by our European debtors.-The Miami News.

The Colonel is delightfully entertaining, but not necessarily reliable in his judgments.-The Troy Record.

George Harvey, former ambassador to Great Britain, is launching a campaign in favor of revision of the British debt agreement. He points out that her annual payments are in excess of her present ability to pay, as measured by imports and exports, and that compliance with the agreement year after year is likely to lead to results favorable neither to the debtor nor creditor nation. After the favorable terms received by Belgium and Italy and the informal assurance which has been given France that she may anticipate easier terms than this country insisted upon when the Caillaux commission was in Washington, the question has been raised time and again in England whether that country, too, would ultimately receive more favorable debt terms from the United States.-The Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The Colonel stops short of advocating a reduction in Britain's debt to America. In fact, he advances no practical suggestion by which we might help Britain. That the British have a stiff problem to solve and that they are not yet out of the woods, every one who has followed European affairs, even in the most casual way, is prepared to admit without reservations of any kind. Colonel Harvey puts emphasis on the value of strong Anglo-American relations and with that object there will be general and ready agreement.-The Herald Tribune.

Of course, they are in a plight now, and they should have sympathy and any aid America can give. They deserve it and we owe it to them. But it will be many generations before we need wear crêpe for the passing of Great Britain. -The Los Angeles Express.

Industry and trade over there may be in a bad way, but they'll show the condemned Yanks whether they can pay or not! It is an admirable mood for a debtor, as viewed from the creditor's standpoint. Yet the suggestion is one that the United States government may find it desirable to consider sooner or later. The Geneva (N. Y.) Times.