Diplomat, Professors Debate Foreign Policy Differences

The Americans and British are as foreign to each other as are peoples who do not share the same language, Nigel Gaydon said last night in a panel discussion in New Lecture Hall. Gaydon, the First Secretary and Information. Officer of the British Embassy in Washington, was countering a statement by David E. Owen, professor of History, that there are no principal differences in foreign policy between the two countries. Owen later added that his view chiefly concerns Western European policy.

Other panel members in the United Nations Council discussion on "The Differences Between British and American Foreign Policy" were McGeorge Bundy, associate professor of Government, and Seymour E. Harris '20, professor of Economics. Samuel H. Beer, professor of Government, was the moderator.

Bundy, speaking on differences of policy in the Far East, said that Britain has always been less optimistic than America about the Nationalist regime in China and so were more inclined to view the Communist rise as inevitable.

Gaydon saw the differences between U.S. and Britain chiefly in method, the English character being traditionally pessimistic and "masterly inactive." Final objectives however, were generally the same in both countries, he said. Gaydon termed British policy in recognizing Red China more realistic than that of American, which has not faced facts only because they were unpleasant.

Harris agreed with the British view that it is an error to increase Asiatic aid to 40 per cent of that given Western Europe.