"See Here, Uncle Sam"

Less than a month after the picture monthly New World proposed political union of the U.S. and Canada (TIME, Oct. 13), another Canadian voice sang a different song. The U.S., wrote Journalist Leslie Roberts (in a series of articles to be syndicated next week in Canadian and U.S. newspapers), is an inept, conceited, selfish country, drunk with power. Two years ago, said he, friendship between the two countries was at an alltime high. But "in recent months, this feeling has changed sharply. If it has not become hostile, at least it can be described as edgy."

"Where Is Your Respect?" The man who leveled this blast was no third-rater. Gregarious, greying Leslie Roberts, 51, a longtime newsman, was executive assistant to Canada's Minister of National Defense in the early years of the war, later a war correspondent. Currently, he free-lances for such publications as the Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest, Collier's and Canada's top slick, Maclean's. On the side, he turns out a thrice-weekly column for the Montreal Herald.

Some of the things which have tended to alienate Canada's affection for the U.S., wrote Roberts, are pretty small: P:"In 1946, an expedition recruited by the U.S. Army . . . was on the point of sailing from Boston under U.S. Navy escort to carry out scientific experiments on Canada's Melville Island, without so much as by-your-leave. Where is your respect for the sovereignty of others. . . ?" P:"[Your] Office of War Transportation in Washington banned shipment of American coal into Canada . . . in a dispute over unreturned freight cars. ... [It was] a picayune incident which reflects a state of mind."

P: "[You think that] anybody who doesn't act like an American, think like an American, or want to become an American . . . needs a psychiatrist."

Such attitudes, said Writer Roberts, "infuriate proud, people." But there have been other things, even more infuriating:

"If Uncle Sam had come into World War II at the outset ... if you even had the gallantry to admit that Britain's postwar travail stems from what she did for the rest of us in 1940 and 1941 . . . Canadian opinion of Uncle Sam would not be what it is today. As Canadians see it, Uncle's new status as dictator of the free world's economy derives directly from the Great Hangback of 1939. . . ."

Worst of all, said Roberts, has been the U.S. adoption of "atomic-dollar diplomacy," the "strictly American" idea that in advancing international credits the banker should be permitted to call the borrower's political and economic shots. "Because you don't like Communism (Canadians don't like it either), you came up with the idea of using the dollar to 'contain' Russian expansion. . . . Because you do not like socialism, many of your leaders assert that the price of helping Britain, or giving the French a lift, must be an undertaking not to carry on ideological experiments with the dollars of the American people."

"Your Technique. . . ." It has not worked, said Roberts. "Nowhere is this more clearly shown than by what happened to Canada, your close neighbor, good friend. . . ." Canada has been lending money to nations in need, to restore world trade. But at the same time, Canada has been paying cash for purchases in the U.S. "Now Canada is forced to give serious consideration to sharp restriction of imports from the U.S. and curtailment of Canadian travel south of the border. . . . In short, you are driving us back to economic nationalism.

". . . Canada is caught in the pincers of America's new power. Down to here you have not shown aptitude to use it with wisdom, consideration or humility. . . . You move in on people, not just people in Europe but on your own good neighbors, militarily, economically and, by indirection, politically. . . .

"You can't run other people's lives, Uncle. . . . We simply do not enjoy being pushed around. . . . Your technique is terrible."

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