Canadian-American Defence

Abstract

is well known, our present intimate relationship with the United States defence is the result of our experience during the war and the situation that has developed the past five years. The story really begins earlier with the exchange of pledges between Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. King 1938. It develops out of the Ogdensburg Agreement of 1940 for the setting up of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, the Hyde Park Declaration of 1941, and the post-war statements made jointly by Prime Minister and President on February 12, 1947, into the large regional association for security established under the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty. The principle laid down 1947 was that in the interests of efficiency and economy, each government has decided that its national defence establishment shall, to the extent authorized by law, continue to collaborate for peacetime joint security purposes. Among other aspects of common policy this involved the encouragement of common designs and standards arms, equipment, organization, methods of training and new developments.1 Both countries are now committed to the policy of contributing to the creation of balanced collective forces amongst the Atlantic group of States. In all this Canadian opinion and policy have moved fast and far. We have become more heavily aware of our American neighbourhood through being total dependence upon it. We began with an adamantine prejudice against any hint of encroachment upon our sovereignty, so safe for a generation the trusteeship of Mr. King. But within the decade we have seen some precedents established this matter of sovereignty. The crudest symbol of a curtailed sovereignty is the presence of foreign troops. It is a symbolism familiar to nearly all the