Book Review: North Atlantic Triangle
| Author | A. Brady |
| Date | 01 April 1946 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070204600100208 |
| Published date | 01 April 1946 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book
Reviews
NORTH
ATLANTIC
TRIANGLE.
The
Interplay
of
Canada,
the
United
States
and
Great Britain.
By
John
Bartlet
Brebner.
194'5.
(New
Haven:
Yale
jUniversity
Press.
Toronto:
Ryerson
Press.
365
pp.
$5.50)
NORTH
ATLANTIC
TRIANGLE
by
Bartlet
Brebner
is
the
last
of
some
twenty-five volumes
on
the
relations
of
Canada and
the
United
States
in
the
excellent
series
sponsored
by
the
Carnegie Endow-
ment
for
International
Peace. The
series
was
planned mainly
by
the
two
Canadian-born
professors
at
Columbia,
James
Shotwell
and
Bart-
let
Brebner,
and it
is
to
a
great
extent
an
achievement
of
Canadian
scholarship,
since
the
authors
of
most
volumes
are
Canadians resident
either
in
Canada
or
-the
United States.
NORTH ATLANTIC
TRIANGLE
comes
close
to being
a
general
synthesis
for
the
whole
series.
It
brings
together
with
admirable
clarity
the
cardinal
facts
that
bear
upon
the
inter-relations
of
Canada,
the
United
States,
and
Great Britain.
In
a
wide-ranging historical
survey
it
links
together the
content
of
de-
tailed
studies
on
diplomatic
history
with
those
which
explore
the
geographic
and material
foundations
of
the
North
American
society.
It
must
be
admitted
that
-the
r6le
of
Great
Britain
in
the
triangle
is
less
fully
and
clearly
assessed
than
those
of
Canada
and
the
United
States.
The domestic
forces
which
influenced
British
attitudes
to
-the
communities beyond
the
Atlantic
are
touched
upon
in
a
shadowy
way,
but
the
principal
focus
of
interest
is
unmistakably
in
North
America.
The
main
concern
of
Professor
Brebner
is
-to
trace
and
explain
policies
as
they
emerge
out
of
circumstances,
and
thus
to
illustrate
how
the
two
English-speaking
states
in
America
have
come
to
possess
their
repute
for peaceful
relations.
More
than
once
in
the
past
Canadian
politicians,
when they
at-
tended
the
Assembly
of
the
League
of Nations,
held
up
as
a
model
to
restive
European
states
the
unguarded
frontier
between Canada
and
the
United States. They
had -the
best
intentions,
but
Europeans
were
not unnaturally
irritated
by
this
pious
oratory, resting
too
often
on
shallow
knowledge
of historical
distinctions. If
any
Canadian
leaders
are
tempted
in
the
future
to
emulate
the
remarks
of
their
pre-
decessors,
they
should
first
read
NORTH
ATLANTIC TRIANGLE
in
order
to
learn
why
peace
was
maintained
in
North
America.
Of
friction
along
the
frontier there
was
an abundance
in
the
nineteenth
century.
Nor
were
gross
imperial
ambitions
absent.
In
one
period,
at
least,
the ultimate
independence
of
Canada
was
a
gamble.
"Prac-
tically
all
Americans,"
writes
Professor Brebner
of
the
years
directly
after
the
birth
of
the
Dominion,
"who
were
interested
at
all
assumed
that
Canada
must immediately
or
quite
soon
be
embodied
in
*the
United
States,
either
by
bullying,
or
by
an
American
bargain
with
173
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