Britain, the Commonwealth, and Western Union

Abstract

BY temperament British statesmen favour a pragmatic approach to foreign policy without always recognizing how powerfully inclination is reinforced by geography. Yet it is the fact that Britain is at once an island semi-detached from Europe and the heart of an overseas Empire that has fundamentally determined, and still determines, the character of her foreign policy. The coming of the steel-clad battleship, of the dreadnought and the submarine before the First World War; of the bomber and of the atomic bomb since, have modified her strategic position though, with due respect to some recent critics, they have not transformed it fundamentally. In the twentieth century, as in earlier centuries, the twin purposes of Britain's policy remain the safeguarding of her position in Europe by ensuring that neither the Low Countries nor France are controlled by an unfriendly Power; and the safety and well-being of her overseas Empire. In theory, and sometimes in practice, these twin purposes have not always been easy to reconcile, and in the posit-war world, when the United Kingdom's margin in man-power and resources in relation to responsibilities is so tenuous, the task of reconciliation may prove more exacting than at any time in the past. But its successful achievement is the condition of Britain's survival as a Great Power, and that is why the relationship between the Commonwealth and Western Union is of cardinal importance today. The problem, however, though greater in urgency than at any earlier period in our history, is the same in essentials and demands the same pragmatic approach. It is well to remember that even in an atomic age geography allows little scope for originality in foreign policy. In recent times the aims of British foreign policy have been nowhere more cogently stated than in Sir Eyre Crowe's memorandum of January 1906.1 The general character of England's foreign policy is determined by the immutable conditions of her geographical situation on the ocean flank of Europe as an island State with vast overseas colonies and dependencies, whose existence and survival as an independent community are inseparably bound up with the possession of preponderant sea power. The tremendous influence of such preponderance has been described in the classical pages of Captain Mahan. No one now disputes it. Sea power is more potent than land power, because it is as pervading as the element in which it