certain extent--the power of compulsion. We can enforce the law, and
we can enforce it upon the unwilling. But the sense of the State in
the minds and hearts of most men is still feeble and undeveloped.
The State wears an extravagant guise to them, and they are apt to
serve it with a grudging assent. In a supreme crisis men will lay
down their lives for it, but they don't lay down their lives
conscientiously so much for what we call the State as for the country
behind it. We in politics--let me say politicians--even at the
moment of the greatest popularity cannot, and perhaps ought not to,
command the love and enthusiasm that the Church, if it is to be the
instrument it might be, can command, and ought to command, from her
sons and daughters.
But after looking for a few minutes at the obvious differences, one
comes to the more congenial topic of how we are able to help one
another.
What can the Christian Church do for the State? Now, here again we
have many voices speaking to us to-day, and, while it would ill
become me to say anything on any difference of opinion that may exist
among you, I think I may take two typical voices in the Church of
England which do express to-day two different lines of thought, and
which yet seem to me to converge if you only go down underneath the
surface. The Bishop of Durham and the Bishop of Manchester represent
two very different schools of political thought. The Bishop of
Durham stresses the individual appeal of the Gospel, and the Bishop
of Manchester the social application of the Christian message. Those
are two sides of the same thing, and I think we ought to look at both
sides at once.
To my mind, the distinctive Christian motive is the individual
transformation of character. The making of that character reacts on
the national life, and I think the Bishop of Durham quite truly
pointed out that, so little effect, looking at it historically, has
the quality of the social order had on individual morality with all
varieties of social organisation, that sometimes even the worst
periods of history have been found compatible with and to co-exist
with the very finest development of the Christian character. And I
venture to agree with him when he stressed what I spoke of in my
first sentence, the danger of people thinking they can satisfy their
consciences by talking at large on sacred subjects and on general
amelioration, and amelioration to be brought about by social
improvements, unless at the same time they never lose sight of the
fact that you must come back ultimately and all the time to the
individual; and that you must not let the joy of beautiful visions or
discussions on dogma or any other things make you forget that it is
the ethic, it is the life, it is the transformation of life, that is
the thing which really matters. Work up from that to the other, and
don't try to work down from the other to that.
He also reminds us of what I think many need to be reminded, that
this world is a much harder place to live in and do your duty in than
we sometimes care to remember. It is so much more comfortable to
make easy speeches. Browning has said, "How very hard it is to be a
Christian," and he never said anything more true. But, of course,
this does not express the whole truth. It is quite true that you
cannot identify Our Lord with any academic theory or school, Tory,
Manchester or Marxian, and when we try to do that I think we make a
profound error; yet, living in this world, the bodies of Christian
people, united by a common ideal, have to act not only as individuals
but as corporate bodies and communities, and it is when they come to
act in that way that their real difficulties, it seems to me, begin.
This is a point which the Bishop of Manchester stresses, and, if I
may say so with respect, quite rightly. His desire is to see the
Christian Churches really influencing public life in this country,
not taking sides, but raising the standard of the country's ideals,
criticising, judging, with Christian charity where possible, but
criticising and judging, that we may be told where we fall short of
the highest ideals in trying to apply political and social remedies
in this country.
It is quite right to tell us, and to tell us emphatically, that the
Christian Churches should give themselves to helping in the elevation
of the social condition of the country, and not be satisfied with
things as they are. You have the double message, and I am sure you
have it in all your Churches through your different teachers and
different types--the cultivation of the spiritual life of the
individual, the regeneration of the mass through the individual, and
the reaction of the regenerated mass on the country at large.
That should be the process, and I think that in these days we all of
us want, perhaps more than anything, and more than at any time, to be
bound lightly and loosely to the luxuries and the good things of this
world. We cannot all of us embrace poverty as St. Francis did, but
we all know the difference between the man who cherishes the
treasures of this world and the man who sits lightly to them, and it
is only by sitting lightly to them that you have the right to say
much that wants saying in these days; for it is only in that way that
you can hope to influence those amongst whom you work, rich and poor
alike. It is a spirit essential to-day in the present conditions of
our country, and I believe and recognise with joy that it is more
common to-day amongst those who are directly relieved from poverty
than it was in the years before the War.
People often say that this is a materialistic age. There is much
truth in that, but I do feel, too, that there has never been an age
in which there are more people struggling, some with more success and
some with less, to live to the highest ideals that are in them, and
doing something to help to better the moral and the physical
conditions of the people among whom they live. And it is only
natural, in a time when you have active and strong the spirit of
things that make for good, that you have co-existent with it the
spirit that makes for evil no less active and strong. I think that
that is possibly one of the reasons why you see the great contrast
that you do see to-day, and that while it is true that there is
throughout Europe a great deal of gross and crass materialism, you
have at the same time all over Europe eager souls who are struggling
to impress themselves on their day, to improve themselves and to
improve the world.
Now, in that struggle we all have to take our part. That struggle
exists everywhere, and is round us every day, and in that struggle
what help to the country can the churches of England give? They
stand reminders day by day of that truth in which they have been
born--to teach us to shun the luxury that divides us so much from one
another, to spread the education that ought to unite us, to supply us
with an inspiration to sustain us. In ways such as this the churches
of England can hold up the right arms of the politicians of England
and join in the common work of making the crooked paths a little
straighter and the rough places a little smoother for our own people.
I think it is well in an assembly like this to remember one other
thing. Some people talk as though Christianity had done its work in
the world--a singular lack of imagination in that remark, seeing that
the work has hardly yet been begun. There is not one of you in an
assembly like this who has not known at one time of your life a
character which can only have been formed on the model of Our Lord
and Master--some man, some woman, it may have been someone among the
highly educated and fortunate in the world, it may have been a
working person. But we have all known, at one time or another, such
a one, and it has been a great help to us in our pilgrimage through
life to look to that example and to walk to some extent in the light
that they cast on their path as they passed along. Now churches may
rise and churches may fall, but the influence of lives like that will
go on for ever, and it is through the light of such lives that the
redemption of this world will ultimately come; for they will survive
persecution, and derision, and coldness, and apathy. We shall never
see those times, nor our children, nor our children's children; but
it will be by the succession of such lives as I have endeavoured to
depict that some day the Kingdom of Heaven will come on earth. If we
cannot hold fast in the most difficult times to an ideal of that
kind, we shall find that we shall be suffocated in the daily toil
which most of us have to undergo, and as a people we shall go down
and perish for lack of vision.
_ON THE EMPIRE_
EMPIRE DAY MESSAGE, 1925
Twenty years ago Empire Day was first celebrated throughout His
Majesty's Dominions. Twenty years hence the Prime Minister of Great
Britain may be able to make his voice heard, not only--as I am
to-day--to listeners in the home country, but to men, women and
children in all parts of the Empire. We, too, in Great Britain may
listen to Empire Day messages spoken by the Dominion Prime Ministers
and by leaders of the Crown Colonies and the Dependencies. Such a
consummation of scientific progress makes a strong appeal to the
imagination. The direct interchange of speech would bring home to
every dweller under the Flag a vivid sense of the unity of the
British Empire. Yet, to my mind, the existence of that unity to-day,
and in all past days since the foundations of our Empire were laid,
is a far more impressive phenomenon.
Our Empire grew from the adventurous spirit of our fathers. They
went forth, urged by the love of adventure, by the passion for
discovery, by the desire for a freer life in new countries. Wherever
they went, they carried with them the traditions, the habits, the
ideals of their Mother Country. Wherever they settled they planted a
new homeland. And though mountains and the waste of seas divided
them, they never lost that golden thread of the spirit which drew
their thoughts back to the land of their birth. Even their children,
and their children's children, to whom Great Britain was no more than
a name, a vision, spoke of it always as Home. In this sense of
kinship, the Empire finds its brightest glory and its most essential
strength. The Empires of old were created by military conquest and
sustained by military domination. They were Empires of subject races
governed by a central power. Our Empire is so different from these
that we must give the word Empire a new meaning, or use instead of it
the title of Commonwealth of British Nations. The great Dominions
are free self-governing States; in their freedom they render
unshakeable allegiance to the Throne. The ties that bind them to
each other and to us are, in the eloquent words of Burke, "light as
air, but strong as links of iron." Each is a daughter in her
mother's house, and mistress in her own.
We British are supposed to be a dull, unimaginative race. But I am
sure that none among us can think upon this Commonwealth of British
nations, which men and women of our own race have created, without a
stirring of our deepest feelings. If anyone should ask for proof
that the unity of the Empire is a reality, let him cast his mind back
to the hour when the living structure of Empire was put to the
supreme test. When war came the response of the Empire was instant,
spontaneous and whole-hearted. You and I can never forget how our
hearts were uplifted by the messages which came, in those critical
days of August 1914, from the great Dominions; and not only from
them, but also from India and the Colonies which were still under our
rule. The Empire came through the ordeal of a long and exhausting
war, strengthened, confirmed in its loyalty.
To-day our minds are engrossed with the problems of restoration after
war. What brighter hope have we, in the solution of these formidable
problems, than our intimate union with countries of great achievement
and still greater potentialities? These are not times when we can
afford to belittle the material side of partnership in Empire. If
we, in these crowded industrial islands, can serve the interests of
newer countries; and if they, in turn, with their fertile spaces and
unlimited natural resources, can serve our interests, we are more
than justified in making common cause with them in repairing the
waste of war. This sense of a common purpose, this desire for mutual
aid, gives a practical touch to the ideal of Empire as a family of
nations. When each member of the family seeks to give its aid,
freely, ungrudgingly, for the good of all, the fabric of the
Commonwealth is more and more closely knit.
It is the task of statesmen in this country and throughout the Empire
to devise the ways and means by which the progress of the British
family may be directed and encouraged. Each one of us, from the
highest to the lowest, has nevertheless an individual share in this
great responsibility. The Empire is not only our master hope; it is
our greatest heritage, the widest opportunity for patriotic service.
It is something infinitely precious which we hold in trust from our
forefathers and for our children. To be worthy of that trust, we
cannot be merely passive admirers of its achievement and its promise.
We must all, in our several degrees, be active learners in the school
of Empire. Over and over again our friends from overseas complain of
the ignorance displayed by people at home regarding the Dominions,
Colonies, and Dependencies. I think that our ardent and friendly
critics are inclined to overlook the difficulty which our busy folk
experience in gathering clear and comprehensive knowledge of all
parts of the Empire. It is no little task for people to know all
that goes on in our great Dominions, to understand the problems
confronting our Crown Colonies, and to enter into the life of the
Indian Empire and the Dependencies, where a handful of our countrymen
labour for the benefit of millions of native races in all stages of
culture. But the difficulty of the duty is no reason why we should
neglect it. Rather is it a stimulus to exert ourselves to widen our
knowledge of the countries and the nations which share with us in the
obligations of Empire.
I feel sure, however, that since the opening of the Empire Exhibition
at Wembley last year, this affectionate grumble from our brothers
overseas has lost much of its point. The Exhibition enabled, and
still enables, our people to learn in a few days much which could not
otherwise be appreciated save by a tour of the Empire. No one can
adequately measure the value of such a demonstration of the arts and
industries of the Commonwealth of British nations. In more than one
sense the Empire came home to us at Wembley. There are many ways,
apart from such exhibitions, by which we can study our Empire at
second hand. But nothing, to my mind, can prove so enlightening as
personal visits overseas, and personal intercourse with dwellers in
our Dominions and Colonies. We are accustomed to look upon the
oceans as dividing us from our brothers and sisters in the Imperial
family. I prefer to regard the seas as highways which unite us. The
progress of communication has made it possible for us to visit
Canada, South Africa, Egypt, the West Indies, and other portions of
the Empire with less trouble and expense than our fathers incurred in
making their Continental tours. It should be the ambition of all of
us to pay at least one visit, however brief, to Britain overseas.
Apart from that, we can do something to foster the interchange of
visits for educative ends. The Empire Parliamentary Association has
done invaluable work in bringing together legislators from different
parts of the Empire. Recently a number of Australian school children
visited Great Britain, and public interest was awakened to the value
of similar visits by our children to the Dominions. All such
movements deserve the fullest encouragement.
Empire Day affords us an opportunity for joining with other parts of
the Empire in expressing our common pride in our Imperial heritage,
and our common determination to build worthily upon the foundations
which the great Empire-builders so well and truly laid. If I were to
attempt to crystallise its message in a phrase, I might take the
words, "Know Thyself," in which the ancients expressed the duty of
the individual man, and widen it to embrace the duty of the British
citizen of to-day--"Know Your Empire."
DEMOCRACY AND THE EMPIRE
FROM A SPEECH TO THE JUNIOR IMPERIAL LEAGUE
3_rd May_, 1924
Your generosity in your reception of me to-night is no less than the
generosity which you showed me when, immediately after defeat in the
country, and before my leadership had been ratified by the party in
London, you asked me to come here to-night as your guest. You are,
indeed, the friends that I would have--friends in bad times as well
as in good, and we shall see the good times together. I think I will
begin by saying a few words to you following on something that I said
yesterday in the Albert Hall, because by your very presence here you
show your keenness, you show your desire to do something for your
party and for the country, and I want to say something, if I can,
that may be of help to you in the work that you have to do.
I spoke about the difficulty of a democracy keeping an Empire. Now,
democracy is a word often used very loosely, but it is really only a
certain form of government, and it is the form of government which
exists in our country to-day. I think it is very important for all
those who are entering on politics and the study of politics to
realise, as I have said before on other occasions, that there is very
little difference in space between tyrannies, autocratic governments,
popular governments, complete democracies like our own, and
governments of licence and anarchy. In other words, you may
represent the forms of government which mankind have tried as lying
round the circumference of a wheel with tyranny at the top, and
working round, as I have described, to anarchy, which inevitably
leads back once more to tyranny; and human governments are always
moving imperceptibly in that course. From that fact it has been
truly said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance; and that
is what you have to exercise, to maintain your liberty on the one
hand that we may never slip back into tyranny, and to guard that
liberty with your lives, if need be, against that licence that leads
to anarchy and to unreason, which inevitably, after having destroyed
the Empire, would come back to tyranny for its life.
Democracy is the most difficult form of government, and therefore the
more worthy of our giving our lives to make it a success. Let us
remember that many kings have been ruined by the tongues of
well-meaning courtiers. Let our statesmen take care that our people
are never ruined by the tongues of able and inspiring friends of
democracy. Democracy is no new thing. More than two thousand years
ago, in one of the most famous democracies that ever existed, a very
great poet, in a play, put these words into the mouth of one of his
political characters: "If two orators proposed, one to build ships of
war, and the other to increase official salaries, the salaries-man
would beat the ships-of-war-man in a canter." Within a generation of
the day on which those words were written, that democracy, whose
power was based on the sea, perished.
In the British House of Commons there have been found members who
have voted, within the last few weeks, both against the construction
of new cruisers and in favour of free railway passes. There is
nothing new under the sun, and there is nothing that I have ever
heard or read of that can be uttered by the extremest of our
opponents in any party in their attempt to catch votes that has not
already been said in the plays of Aristophanes. Now the instances to
which I alluded yesterday as showing incapacity to take a long view,
which is so often the great weakness of leaders of a democracy--that
incapacity has been shown in the last few days by the decision of the
Government in the case of Singapore, and in the case to which Lord
Plymouth alluded of certain items of preference with the Dominions.
It is a want of imagination and the fear of taking the risk of what
could only be a temporary and a local unpopularity, but it is that
very cowardice that, in the long run, does so much harm to this form
of government. A good motive to my mind can hardly be a sufficient
excuse for an act of unwisdom.
Now you here show by your very title that you care sufficiently for
your ideals to make sacrifices for them, and to try to induce other
people to make sacrifices too. You are not afraid of the word
"Empire." I know that there are people who dislike it. They think
that it has a militaristic tinge. We may call it a Commonwealth of
Nations, a fine title, if we will, but let us remember that the
Empire, as we know it, is different from any that has existed
hitherto; for it has not been the creation of conquering armies,
although armies have played their part, but our Empire arose from the
bone and sinew of our people. It was in the first place commercial
adventurers who won our Indian Empire, and how much of our Dominions
has not been called into being by men and women who, for reasons of
conscience, or desire to find a country in which they could lead a
wider, freer life, left our shores voluntarily in a high spirit of
adventure? Thus were the beginnings of our Empire created of our own
people and by our own people. And that is why it is our work, and
the work of our own people of all classes, to see that that heritage
is preserved.
Study these things for yourselves. Learn the history, talk to your
friends from the Dominions, and get so lively a sense of what it
stands for that you can talk to others about them and teach the real
meaning of these great things. Many years ago no task could have
seemed more impossible than the creation of a United States; yet the
strength and perseverance of the settlers in that country, and the
discoveries subsequently made, enabled them to bring into a United
Empire or Commonwealth that great country with its three thousand
miles' width of territory and with its varied climates. Some day it
may well be that our dream may come true of an Empire whose ways are
the great waterways of the world, and in which men shall move for
their industry and for their homes from end to end with as little
concern as to-day they move from the State of New York to that of
California. These ideals have long been among the most cherished
ideals of our party. We have attempted to teach the people what we
believe would lead to the more speedy fruition of them. We have not
yet wholly succeeded, but you have joined yourselves to us although
you know that at times we have failed, bringing to us a new
enthusiasm of youth and confidence that will carry everything before
it.
* * * * * * * *
There is only one more subject on which I should like to say a few
words, because it is one that I refer to nearly every time I speak,
and by this time those who criticise my methods would call them
platitudes. Platitudes they may be, but I am going on repeating them
until they have some effect. I think it was Sir William Harcourt who
said that you had to repeat a thing a dozen times before anyone took
any notice. I shall be proud to follow the example of so
distinguished a Liberal statesman. I want to speak on one aspect of
peace in industry. Now much has been written, and much has been said
on that subject. I will only touch on one point. I am convinced,
and I am not without experience, that one of the chief things we want
is more knowledge and more light--knowledge on the part of each party
of the position of the other. Now, to a certain extent, that is not
difficult to get. What is difficult to get, and what is of vital
importance, is that the men should have knowledge about the
industries in which, and for which, they work. What commended to me
the miners' agreement was that there you have, in an agreement in one
of the greatest trades of the country, that which gives you to a
considerable extent what I have always wanted.