Article February 9, 1899 ISSUE

Friendship for America

The Right Hon. Arthur James Balfour, First Lord of the Treasury and leader of the Ministerialists in the House of Commons, delivered his annual address to his constituents at Manchester, January 30, 1899. After speaking of the "intrinsic difficulty which Continental nations find in understanding Great Britain's aims," he continued as follows:—

"But there is surely one great country which, by community of language, religions, blood, origin, and even institutions, is well fitted to understand us, and a country which we should be well fitted to understand. Need I say that the country to which I refer is the United States? Some foreign critics, cynical by profession and training, hold the view that the friendship now happily subsisting between the English-speaking peoples on both sides of the Atlantic is but the growth of the moment and depends upon a transitory community of interests. They affect to believe that when this disappears friendship also will disappear. They hold that, if British trade should feel injured by some inconvenient tariff, immediately the sentiments so generally felt at this moment in Great Britain toward America would vanish like the leaves in autumn.

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