Presaging the Atlantic Alliance: President Warren G. Harding Calls for the United States and Great Britain to Act in Accord, Saying the Welfare of the World Depends on It

In 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill promulgated the Atlantic Charter, which was the foundation of the Atlantic Alliance, saying as the heads of state of the United States and Great Britain that they “deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.” Their peoples, united by blood, tradition, beliefs, purpose, and language, would act together to win the Second World War. The Atlantic Alliance continued through the Cold War, and remains in place today. It is an alliance for both wartime and peacetime.

But surprisingly, this was not the first call for a the U.S. and Britain to coordinate policy and act together, in peacetime as well as war. In the wake of World War I, in a letter to The Times of London, the authoritative newspaper that would be read by everyone in authority, Warren Harding made the same call.

Typed letter signed, as President, on White House letterhead, Washington, May 18, 1921, “To the Editor of the Times, London, England”. “I congratulate the London Times and its proprietor on the liberality of view, no less than the enterprise, which prompt them to celebrate the birthday of American independence by the publication of a special ‘Fourth of July Edition.’

“In the development of civilization, in the extension over ever-widening areas of the world’s surface of the idea of law as the bedrock of liberty, the two great English-speaking peoples have played a part of immeasurable importance. The splendor of past achievement should and must be an inspiration to continued effort. Our complementary power for good, however, can only be exerted in full beneficence if there be mutual understanding, not only of national hopes and ideals, but of national problems and difficulties. Such an edition as The Times is to publish, in which American questions will be discussed by eminent Americans, must promote such understanding.

“A common language and the common source from which we have taken our institutions have laid the foundation of accord. Upon this we may firmly build, knowing that the welfare of the world and the immediate interest of our respective peoples are alike concerned in the continuance of a friendship which has withstood the shocks of more than a hundred years, and a maintained regard for the rights and aspirations of all mankind. That clearer understanding which the ‘Fourth of July Edition’ will promote will prove the surest antidote to that unfortunate irritation which is too often caused by the actually unimportant but sometimes aggravating utterances of thoughtless demagogues and irresponsible agitators.”

This is unquestionably the most important letter Harding ever wrote as president, though it would be twenty years before its call was officially ratifies by FDR and Churchill.