Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World

by Patrick J. Buchanan

There was a second reason why Britain surrendered naval supremacy. The national debt had exploded fourteenfold during the war. Half the national tax revenue was going for interest. Lloyd George feared that if Britain took up the U.S. challenge to her naval supremacy by building warships, Americans would demand immediate payment of her war debts. The Yankees now held the mortgage on the empire. Third, Wilsonianism, the belief that the blood and horror of the Great War had given birth to a new world where men recognized the insanity of war and were disposed to work together for peace, had rooted itself deep in the British soul. Internationalism and pacifism were the bold new ideas. The wicked old days and ways of militarists, navalists, and power blocs were over. It was the time of the League of Nations.