From the archive: Britain’s link with U.S. 24 july, 1936

“We need no treaty of friendship with the United States of America,” said Mr A Duff Cooper, Secretary of State for War at a Pilgrims luncheon in London yesterday.

“A man does not make a treaty with his brother, and when we witness the terrible events which are taking place in Europe, and when we read on a placard that Seville Cathedral, one of the most beautiful in the whole world, has been destroyed, we feel indeed Europe may be tumbling to ruins, but that there is a new world, colonised by so many of our own people, a new nation sharing so many of our traditional ideals, with whom we have ever lived and must ever live in the closest friendship, a new hope for civilisation, and that gives us abiding faith.” Mr W S Morrison, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said: “We both got into world Depression together, and it appears as if we are now climbing out of it together; we hope so.”