Which was admonition at once of the Centralizationists and their
opponents, the Nationalists.
Whatever alteration of existing British inter-arrangements may come
after the war will be done on instinct in view of circumstances that
cannot now be foreseen. Wherefore clamorers for this or that, their
favorite scheme, are now inopportunists. Hence they are neglected by the
public as unimpressive, futile wasters of breath or ink. Indeed Canada,
Great Britain, the whole race of mankind are now swept on the crest of a
huge wave of Fate. When it casts them ashore, recedes, leaves men to
consider what may best be done for the future, then will have come the
time to rearrange political fabrics, if need be. Then Sir Robert Borden
will probably continue in his often clearly specified opinion that
Canada, if remaining liable as now to be drawn into Great Britain's more
perilous wars--a liability which must ever urge Canada to strong
participation in order that the peril may be the sooner ended--ought to
have a share in controlling Great Britain's foreign policy. Which
sharing Mr. Asquith declared last year impracticable, in that sense
inadmissible.
Westminster must retain freedom to move, act, strike quickly. Her course
toward Germany had to be decided last August within a few hours.
Obviously her freedom, her power for promptitude would be hindered in
proportion to need for such consultation with and approval by councilors
of many distant countries as is presupposed by advocates of imperial
federation. Why establish control by cumbersome, superfluous machinery
when the war has made it clear as the sun at high noon that the
essential desideratum, British Union, exists now? All the notable
communities of the King's realms have demonstrated that they are in the
mind, the condition of a voluntary empire. What more can be desired
save by such as desire old country domination of all the concerned
countries, and who really long for a formal and subservient Empire?
Sir Richard Jebb, a deep student of the Empire problem, declared clearly
last November the meaning of that general voluntary British war union
which is a wonder of mankind, and in the course to teach a profound,
general political lesson. He wrote:
That the war will in any event change the external relations
is evident. But why, if we win, should it change the political
relations between the parts, except to the extent of
encouraging us to conserve and develop the existing system
which has given so signal an example of effective imperial
unity in time of need? Continually talking of imperial unity,
we fail to recognize it when we have got it. There is never
going to be a moment when one might say "Yesterday we were not
united; today the Grand Act (of Imperial Federation
understood) has been signed; henceforth we are united."
The cult of the Grand Act is a snare and a delusion. Whatever
may happen hereafter--even the Grand Act itself--posterity is
likely to look back upon August, 1914, as the moment when the
British Empire reached the zenith of its unity. Let us
remember that the existing system is not stationary, though
its principle (voluntary union) may be final. It has been
developing steadily since 1902.
The Australian fleet unit, the first of the Dominion navies,
which enables each to exert upon foreign policy the full
weight of its importance in the empire, was not begun until
1910. The corollary, that any Dominion Minister appointed to
reside in London should have free and constant access to the
British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, was only
conceded in January, 1912, and has not yet been taken
advantage of, even by Australia.
But the development is all true to principle. What principle?
Voluntary co-operation, as opposed to central compulsion. In
war, as in peace, each of the Britannic nations is free to do
or not to do. But we have invoked naval and military
co-ordination, with results which the Australian Navy has
already exemplified (on the Emden, &c.)
Has this system of the free Commonwealth, as distinguished
from the German principle of a centralized empire organized
primarily for war, broken down under the supreme test, as so
many of our prophets predicted? On the contrary, it has alone
saved South Africa to the empire, besides eliciting
unrestricted military aid from each part. Why change it for
something diametrically opposed to its spirit, substituting
compulsion for liberty, provinces for nation-States?
Sir Richard Jebb's sentence, specifying the nature of the Australian
influence on foreign policy, seems apt reply to Sir Robert Borden's
oft-repeated specification that a share in control of foreign policy
should accrue to the Dominions by reason of their participation in or
liability to war. This liability really compels them to engage with all
their strength, lest they comfort an enemy by abstention, or by
confining their armaments to self-defense, which might and would be read
as disapproval of Britain's course, if the war were one of magnitude
endangering her. A system more powerfully requiring Great Britain to
take heed that her quarrel be just, lest she be not thrice armed by
approving children, can scarcely be imagined.
On this matter I have had the pleasure and benefit, during the last
twelve years, of talking with Sir Wilfrid Laurier often. In the quoted
Jebb view he agreed closely when I saw him a few days ago. He remarked,
with special regard to this article for THE NEW YORK TIMES, that his
point of insistence at the Imperial Conferences of 1902, 1907, 1911, and
on all proper occasions, has been that local autonomy--that is, complete
self-government for each of the Dominions--is not only consistent with
British unity but necessary thereto as promoting and conserving that
unity.
When Mr. Asquith's denial of the practicability of giving the Dominions
a direct share in control of Great Britain's foreign policy is
considered, the Jebb-Laurier view would appear one to which Sir Robert
Borden, cautious statesman, must be led by recognition that potent
influence on foreign policy cannot but come to Dominions energetically
providing at once for their own defense and for their power to aid Great
Britain all along the line.
As to imperial federation, Sir Wilfrid remarked that he has ever been
openly attracted by that aspiration toward permanent British union, on
which advocacy of the vague project has ever been bottomed. He is, as he
said to me, and as all his long series of political actions have
manifested, British in heart and way of political thinking, as indeed
substantially all his French-Canadian compatriots are. British
liberality, not to say liberalism, has attached them to the British
system as firmly as any community originating from the United Kingdom.
It was a French-Canadian statesman who asserted, some fifty years ago,
when many British-Canadians seemed tending toward union with the United
States, "The last shot fired in Canada for British connection will be
from a French-Canadian." That was before the civil war abolished
slavery.
But, even as the Britishism of Old Country liberals is strongly
tinctured by devotion to ideals which Americans are wont to regard as
theirs--ideals making for settled peace, industry, the uplift of the
"common people," fair room and reward for those abilities which
conspicuously serve the general welfare--so Sir Wilfrid and his
compatriots acknowledge their Britishism to be acutely conscious of
political kinship with the American people. The French-Canadian
yearning, like that of many Canadians of British origin, is rather for
English-speaking union--a union of at least thorough understanding and
common designs with the American people--than for the narrower exclusive
British union sought by Canadian imperial federationists.
Sir Wilfrid said, in effect, (I do not profess to report his very
words,) that federation of those British communities widely separated by
geography, but alike in race, language, laws, principles, has always
attracted him as a project of excellent intentions. It is at worst a
noble dream. That dream has become less impracticable than it was
formerly, he thinks, by reason of the essential diminution of the world,
diminution of distances and of time by latter-day inventions.
Against the idea of general representation in a central Parliament at
London, Sir Wilfrid pointed out that Edmund Burke objected "opposuit
natura"--nature forbade it. The wisest of political philosophers could
not foresee the telegraph, wireless, steam, airships. These have made a
useful central imperial Parliament at least conceivable. Could it be
more useful than the advisory council, or Imperial Conference which has
become quadrennial, and might possibly become annual? That is matter for
discussion. Sir Wilfrid said that such is the political genius of the
British race that he would be rash who alleged any design impracticable
toward which the race may tend so generally as to put it under
discussion for arrangement of details. Conservation of local
self-government, prime essential to agreement for union on common
purposes, might prove reconcilable with federated defense.
But there is, to Sir Wilfrid's way of thinking, one large objection
against now attempting imperial federation. Its agitators contemplate a
scheme immense, yet not sufficiently inclusive. They do not contemplate
English-speaking solidarity. They purpose leaving out the majority of
English-speakers--the American people. In this they do not follow Cecil
Rhodes, a chief propagandist of their main design. It is true that the
idea of getting Americans to participate in any formal union with all
the rest of their brethren by race and tongue seems now impractical. But
time works wonders. Mr. Gladstone foresaw the United States a people of
six hundred comfortable millions, living in union before the end of the
next century. The hegemony of the English-speaking nations seems likely
to be within attainment by that one of them which appears destined to
become far the most powerful of all in numbers, in wealth, and in
security of environment. Time may show to our successors in this world
some effective method of establishing agreements amounting to that
solidarity for English-speaking action which has been acclaimed as
existent for English-speaking thinking by a mind so eminently reasonable
as that of Lord Haldane.
It would be hasty, thinks Sir Wilfrid, and it might be injurious for the
British countries to move toward any sort of formal union ostensibly
tending to set them collectively apart from the United States. Give
great beneficent ideas time to develop. Britons can well afford to take
their time, since the war has shown existent among them an almost
perfect union of sentiment and purpose. And this, apparently, with the
blessed effect of enhancing general American good-will to Britons. From
so much good understanding more may ensue, Sir Wilfrid concluded.
Such Canadians as hold Edmund Burke to have been a spokesman of
consummate political wisdom are apt to regard the busy stir of
doctrinaires, who scream for closer political junction of the British
peoples, even as Burke regarded the hurry of some of the same kidney in
his time. Resolute to bind the thirteen colonies forever to England,
they proceeded to offend, outrage, and drive those colonies to
independence. Be it remembered that these colonies had contributed so
loyally, so liberally to England's armaments and wars that grateful
London Parliaments had insisted on voting back to them the subsidies
they had granted, holding the contributions too generous. To later
proposals of foolish henchmen of George III., proposals that the
colonies, since they had revealed themselves as strong and rich, should
be dragged into some formal political subordination by which, as by
latter-day Imperial Federation, they might be involuntarily mustered and
taxed for imperial purposes, Burke said:
Our hold on the colonies is the close affection which grows
from common names, from kindred blood, from similar
privileges, and equal protection. These are the ties which,
though light as air, are strong as links of iron. Let the
colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated
with your Government; they will cling and grapple to you, and
no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their
allegiance....
As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority
of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple
consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and
sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces
toward you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will
have. The more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect
will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is
a weed that grows on every soil. They may have it from Spain;
they may have it from Prussia; but until you become lost to
all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity,
freedom they can have from none but you.
This is the commodity of price, of which you have the
monopoly.... Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that
your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your
sufferances, ... your letters of office and your instructions
and your suspending clauses are the things that hold together
the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do
not make your Government. Dead instruments, passive tools as
they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives
all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the
English Constitution which, infused through the mighty mass,
pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of
the empire, even to the minutest member.
And the doctrinaires of Centralization, vociferating their fad of
Imperial Federation, would have that Constitution, in the moment of its
supreme triumph for unity, cast away! Cast away for a new and written
one by which Great Britain and all her children alike would chain
themselves together! Well may practical statesmen view the doctrinaires
with some disdain, not unmindful of Burke's immortal scorn of such
formalists:
"A sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and
material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors
of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the
machine. To men truly initiated and rightly taught, those ruling and
master principles which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned,
have no substantial existence, are in truth everything and all in all.
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great
empire and little minds go ill together."