London that would hand over the Royal Navy's ships to Germany. Churchill later wrote of Lothian: "Airey, light, aloof, dignified, censorious, yet in a light and gay manner, Lothian had always been good company. Now, under the same hammer that smote us all, I found an earnest, deeply-stirred man. He was primed with every aspect and detail of the American attitude. He won nothing, but goodwill and confidence in Washington by his handling of the Destroyers-for-Bases negotiations. He was fresh from intimate contact with the president, with whom he had established a warm personal friendship". In his speeches to the American people, Lothian portrayed Nazi Germany as a ruthless power bent upon world domination, and to ease American discomfort at British imperialism, noted that the British Empire was evolving into the Commonwealth. Lothian made point of emphasizing that members of the Commonwealth were under not British control, giving the example of Ireland which had declared neutrality, and stated that nations such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada were at war because they had chosen to enter the war. About the charge that India and the rest of the British colonies around the world had no say in whatever they wanted to be involved in the war, Lothian stated these colonies would be granted Dominion status in due course once they were "ready". The fact that Lothian had been an advocate of granting Dominion status to India made him sound credible on this issue to American audiences, through Churchill had no intention of ever granting India Dominion status. Finally, Lothian depicted democracy as a special value of the English-speaking peoples, claiming that democracy had been born in ancient Athens, nourished in Rome, developed into maturity in Britain and had finally reached perfection in the United States. In a ceremony performed at the Library of Congress, Lothian placed one of the first versions of the Magna Carta produced in 1215 at the library as a gift from the people of Britain to the people of the United States to illustrate their common democratic heritage. In his speech, Lothian declared that he placed this copy of the Magna Carta "alongside its own descendants, the Declaration of Independence and the American constitution". Lothian was greatly influenced by the navalist theories of the American historian Alfred Thayer Mahan put forward in his 1890 book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, and he