What is this thing called the British Empire? A family of children,
ruled by a Mother, or a gathering of kinsfolk under the roof of one
ideal? Is it in reality an Empire or a Confederacy? It has been the
first, it is fast becoming the second.
Imperialism is governed for good or ill by the principle that underlies
it. At the time of the American War of Independence British government
stood for the principle of Domination; even so late as the Boer War
there is much doubt whether, for the moment at least, it stood for
anything very different. A great change has come. The British Empire
stands now, as it never yet stood, for the principle “Live and let
live”; for coherence through common ideals and affections, rather than
for coherence through force. In this war we have not ceased to assert
that, besides the preservation of our own safety, we fight for the
independence of little countries, and the rights of nations to settle
their own affairs. By this declared championship, unless we wish to
bring down poetic justice on our heads, we have consecrated the
principle of Freedom within the confederacy of the British Empire; we
have abrogated the right of coercion. Whether we realize it or no, we
have fixed our national attitude. When the war is over, the feeling of
Britain towards her kindred will be warmer and more generous than it has
ever been; they have stood side by side with us like men and brothers,
in touching loyalty. And the feeling in the kindred countries will be
warmer and fuller of respect; they have seen the Old Country on her
trial, have seen that she did not fail of what the world expected from
her; seen that she had stuff in her beyond their hopes—for a new
country is ever inclined to impatience, even to a certain contempt, for
an old country. It was just as well for Britain’s reputation with her
kinsfolk that this war came.
Yes, we shall be a true Confederacy, a great Democratic Confederacy,
bound in honour to observe towards the world the principles that it
observes towards itself; to keep its hands clean of narrow and
provincial patriotism, of that raw overriding of the rights and
interests of others, the ugliness of which we have just seen in the
violation of Belgium, the Nemesis of which we are about to see.
And, looking first at home, we have got to get used now, at once, while
we are still fighting, before we have the leisure and the energy to
revive old animosities and party cries, to the idea that civil strife in
Ireland after this war is over would be criminal lunacy, making us the
playboy of the world, and destroying the prestige we shall have gained.
It seems that our statesmen now recognize this. But whatever seems to
settle the Irish question in time of war may not survive the strain of
the peace that follows. If the lamentable cleavage in Ireland
reappears—as it well may, for it is based on such real differences of
temperament—let us in England be resolute not to be re-involved in
partizanship. Let us resolve to force neither one party nor the other;
confine ourselves to insisting that those who object so strenuously to
inclusion in an opposite camp shall be as loth to include their
opponents as they are to be included. Only of its own free will can
Ireland ever be made one. If the halves be not forced, they will become
one the faster. Time is the healer; time and forbearance, given an
elastic machinery to encourage and ripen reconciliation. Of a surety,
renewed trouble over Ireland would be the very worst augury for the
future of an Empire that stands, and is to stand, for Freedom.
To be trustee for the principle “Live and let live”; watchdog against
aggression by herself or any other; cornerstone of a world so built that
all peoples, however small and weak, may know that they can safely work
out their own destinies—that would be for Britain the grand ideal. But
the British Empire can only hope to stand for it by keeping the form of
a Free Confederacy, by the most rigid scrutiny of its own conduct, and
by developing the feeling that it is beneath Imperial dignity to wrest
material benefit from the losses of others.
When the war began we were in what is commonly called “a tidy mess.” If
we really want to extract from the furnace of this fearful conflagration
some gold of comfort, we shall see to it that we do not go back to the
deadlock of futile and bitter strife that was then paralyzing the
country’s soul. We shall see to it over Ireland; and over the woman’s
question. Strife is the very condition of life and human progress, but
in the name of reason let us have it over real live issues, not over
those on which the national conscience has already in secret given
judgment. Will not the first act of justice be the giving of the vote to
women on the same terms as to men—with, perhaps, some limitation of age
to equalize numbers, since the preponderance of women is brought about
mainly by the less dangerous nature of their lives? A more humiliating
or poisonous relation than that which prevailed between the sexes in
this country before the war over the question of the vote can hardly be
conceived. In the supreme appeal to our patriotism, that grievous
trouble, that mischievous irritation, has vanished. The war has
exorcised mutual exasperation, refounded mutual faith, healed many
wounds, laid the ghosts of many doubts and arguments. The old bogeys are
gone—that women are more bellicose than men; that they are less
bellicose than men; that national safety would be imperilled one way or
the other. The old plea is gone—that, since women do not fight and
suffer for the State, they are not worthy to vote for her—gone,
dispersed by service, sacrifice, and suffering. Every man has had to ask
his heart which he would rather do: Go, as a man goes, to the trenches,
or sit at home, as a woman has had to do, waiting for news of his life
or death. And every man knows the answer.
The women of Britain have put themselves and their claims aside, to work
and suffer for the country of which they are not yet citizens. It will
be too black altogether if, after all they have gone through, they are
again refused admittance to that citizenship.
_Women who do not want the vote need never exercise it_; women who think
the vote bad for their sex will still be free as air, when the vote has
been given, to organise their sex against _use_ of the deadly thing. But
to continue after this war to debar from being citizens, if they so
wish, the hundreds of thousands of women who have served as loyally as
men, and suffered more; to hang up again in hopeless chancery a measure
of common justice that has long commended itself to nearly all the best
minds in the country, a measure that, but for political accidents, would
have already been granted, would be an unspeakable piece of national
folly and ingratitude. There is surely now a general will to give the
vote. What our minds must be turned to is the need, at the conclusion of
the war, to have ready some means by which that general desire may be
carried into effect, and women welcomed into the body politic, before
the old deadlock difficulties and heart-burnings can begin again.
It is not my part to suggest to superior wisdom what those means should
be; but perhaps one may express the personal conviction that a measure
of universal suffrage, granting one vote to every man above a certain
age (not necessarily so young as twenty-one), and one vote to every
woman—possibly over such higher age as would equalize the voting power
of the sexes, though I myself do not fear that inequality—that such a
measure would not affect to any appreciable extent the balance between
the great parties in the State, and would ensure that those parties in
future sprang from the main cleavages of human nature rather than from
the accidents of privilege. Is it too much to hope that, in heroic
times, such a measure might be passed by consent? Too much to expect
that after this struggle, where all stand shoulder to shoulder, we shall
feel that a man, however poor, and a woman, however humble, has a stake
in the country which has done so little for him or her, yet for which he
or she is suffering perhaps more than the rest of us, and, extending the
hand of fellowship, say: “It is time you stood shoulder to shoulder with
us in peace as well as war.” The voteless man! The woman! How many of
the first will have given their lives; how many of the second their
hearts! Have heroism, death, sacrifice, gone by privilege of property or
sex, in this war? Shall we really take the lives, the wounds, the
sufferings of the many men debarred from citizenship by mere lack of
property, the services and sacrifice of innumerable women, and just say:
“Thank you, helots!” For in a real democracy what is he or she who has
no vote, save a helot, at the absolute disposal of the enfranchised
community? It is as the symbol of freedom that the vote is so precious!
Granted! But if from the infancy of this country we had not been
sticklers for symbols, should we now be the free people that we are—as
peoples go?
If there is not to emerge from this community of suffering some
community of fellowship and gladness, some sweeping out of old rancours
from our hearts and of prejudices from our brains, and a resolve to
fight the contests of the future with a greater generosity—then Peace
will be a sorry festival.
There is so much work to be done, so great a fight for the nation’s
health, ahead. It is time the decks were cleared of lumber!