HOW COLONIES ARE OWNED
Why twentieth-century methods must differ from eighteenth--The
vagueness of our conceptions of statecraft--How Colonies are
"owned"--Some little recognized facts--Why foreigners could not
fight England for her self-governing Colonies--She does not "own"
them, since they are masters of their own destiny--The paradox
of conquest: England in a worse position in regard to her own
Colonies than in regard to foreign nations--Her experience as the
oldest and most practised colonizer in history--Recent French
experience--Could Germany hope to do what England cannot do?
The foregoing chapters dispose of the first six of the seven
propositions outlined in Chapter III. There remains the seventh, dealing
with the notion that in some way England's security and prosperity would
be threatened by a foreign nation "taking our Colonies from us"--a thing
which we are assured her rivals are burning to do, as it would involve
the "breaking up of the British Empire" to their advantage.
Let us try to read some meaning into a phrase which, however childish it
may appear on analysis, is very commonly in the mouths of those who are
responsible for British political ideas.
In this connection it is necessary to point out--as, indeed, it is in
every phase of this problem of the relationship of States--that the
world has moved, that methods have changed. It is hardly possible to
discuss this matter of the necessary futility of military force in the
modern world for ten minutes without it being urged that as England has
acquired her Colonies by the sword, it is evident that the sword may do
a like service for modern States desiring Colonies. About as reasonably
could one say that, as certain tribes and nations in the past enriched
themselves by capturing slaves and women among neighboring tribes, the
desire to capture slaves and women will always be an operative motive in
warfare between nations, as though slavery had not been put economically
out of court by modern industrial methods, and as though the change in
social methods had not put the forcible capture of women out of court.
What was the problem confronting the merchant adventurer of the
sixteenth century? There were newly-discovered foreign lands containing,
as he believed, precious metals and stones and spices, and inhabited by
savages or semi-savages. If other traders got those stones, it was quite
evident that he could not. His colonial policy, therefore, had to be
directed to two ends: first, such effective political occupation of the
country that he could keep the savage or semi-savage population in
check, and could exploit the territory for its wealth; and, secondly,
such arrangements as would prevent other nations from searching for
this wealth in precious metals, spices, etc., since, if they obtained
it, he could not.
That is the story of the French and Dutch in India, and of the Spanish
in South America. But as soon as there grew up in those countries an
organized community living in the country itself, the whole problem
changed. The Colonies, in this later stage of development, have a value
to the Mother Country mainly as a market and a source of food and raw
material, and if their value in those respects is to be developed to the
full, they inevitably become self-governing communities in greater or
less degree, and the Mother Country exploits them exactly as she
exploits any other community with which she may be trading. Germany
might acquire Canada, but it could no longer be a question of her taking
Canada's wealth in precious metals, or in any other form, to the
exclusion of other nations. Could Germany "own" Canada, she would have
to "own" it in the same way that Britain does; the Germans would have to
pay for every sack of wheat and every pound of beef that they might buy,
just as though Canada "belonged" to England or to anybody else. Germany
could not have even the meagre satisfaction of Germanizing these great
communities, for one knows that they are far too firmly "set." Their
language, law, morals, would have to be, after German conquest, what
they are now. Germany would find that the German Canada was pretty much
the Canada that it is now--a country where Germans are free to go and
do go; a field for Germany's expanding population.
As a matter of fact, Germany feeds her expanding population from
territories like Canada and the United States and South America without
sending its citizens there. The era of emigration from Germany has
stopped, because the compound steam-engine has rendered emigration
largely unnecessary. And it is the developments which are the necessary
outcome of such forces, that have made the whole colonial problem of the
twentieth century radically different from that of the eighteenth or
seventeenth.
I have stated the case thus: No nation could gain any advantage by the
conquest of the British Colonies, and Great Britain could not suffer
material damage by their "loss," however much this would be regretted on
sentimental grounds, and as rendering less easy a certain useful social
co-operation between kindred peoples. For the British Colonies are, in
fact, independent nations in alliance with the Mother Country, to whom
they are no source of tribute or economic profit (except in the way that
foreign nations are), their economic relations being settled not by the
Mother Country, but by the Colonies. Economically, England would gain by
their formal separation, since she would be relieved of the cost of
their defence. Their loss, involving, therefore, no change in economic
fact (beyond saving the Mother Country the cost of their defence), could
not involve the ruin of the Empire and the starvation of the Mother
Country, as those who commonly treat of such a contingency are apt to
aver. As England is not able to exact tribute or economic advantage, it
is inconceivable that any other country, necessarily less experienced in
colonial management, would be able to succeed where England had failed,
especially in view of the past history of the Spanish, Portuguese,
French, and British Colonial Empires. This history also demonstrates
that the position of British Crown Colonies, in the respect which we are
considering, is not sensibly different from that of the self-governing
ones. It is not to be presumed, therefore, that any European nation
would attempt the desperately expensive business of the conquest of
England, for the purpose of making an experiment with her Colonies which
all colonial history shows to be doomed to failure.
What are the facts? Great Britain is the most successful colonizing
nation in the world, and the policy into which her experience has driven
her is that outlined by Sir C.P. Lucas, one of the greatest authorities
on colonial questions. He writes, speaking of the history of the British
Colonies on the American continent, thus:
It was seen--but it might not have been seen had the United
States not won their independence--that English colonists, like
Greek Colonies of old, go out on terms of being equal, not
subordinate, to those who are left behind; that when they have
effectively planted another and a distant land, they must,
within the widest limits, be left to rule themselves; that,
whether they are right, or whether they are wrong--more,
perhaps, when they are wrong than when they are right--they
cannot be made amenable by force; that mutual good feeling,
community of interest, and abstention from pressing rightful
claims to their logical conclusion, can alone hold together a
true Colonial Empire.
But what in the name of common sense is the advantage of conquering them
if the only policy is to let them do as they like, "whether they are
right, or whether they are wrong--more, perhaps, when they are wrong
than when they are right"? And what avails it to conquer them if they
cannot be made amenable to force? Surely this makes the whole thing a
_reductio ad absurdum_. Were a Power like Germany to use force to
conquer Colonies, she would find out that they were not amenable to
force, and that the only working policy was to let them do exactly as
they did before she conquered them, and to allow them, if they
chose--and many of the British Colonies do so choose--to treat the
Mother Country absolutely as a foreign country. There has recently been
going on in Canada a discussion as to the position which that Dominion
should hold with reference to the British in the event of war, and
that discussion has made Canada's position quite plain. It has been
summarized thus: "We must always be free to give or refuse support."[25]
Could a foreign nation say more? In what sense does England "own" Canada
when Canadians must always be free to give or refuse their military
support to England; and in what way does Canada differ from a foreign
nation while England may be at war when Canada can be at peace? Mr.
Asquith formally endorses this conception.[26]
This shows clearly that no Dominion is held to be bound by virtue of its
allegiance to the Sovereign of the British Empire to place its forces at
his disposition, no matter how real may be the emergency. If it should
not desire so to do, it is free to refuse so to do. This is to convert
the British Empire into a loose alliance of independent Sovereign
States, which are not even bound to help each other in case of war. The
military alliance between Austria and Germany is far more stringent than
the tie which unites, for purposes of war, the component parts of the
British Empire.
One critic, commenting on this, says:
Whatever language is used to describe this new movement of
Imperial defence, it is virtually one more step towards
complete national independence on the part of the Colonies. For
not only will the consciousness of the assumption of this task
of self-defence feed with new vigor the spirit of nationality,
it will entail the further power of full control over foreign
relations. This has already been virtually admitted in the case
of Canada, now entitled to a determinant voice in all treaties
or other engagements in which her interests are especially
involved. The extension of this right to the other colonial
nations may be taken as a matter of course. Home rule in
national defence thus established reduces the Imperial
connection to its thinnest terms.[27]
Still more significant, perhaps, is the following emphatic declaration
from Mr. Balfour himself. Speaking in London, on November 6, 1911, he
said:
We depend as an Empire upon the co-operation of absolutely
independent Parliaments. I am not talking as a lawyer; I am
talking as a politician. I believe from a legal point of view
that the British Parliament is supreme over the Parliament of
Canada or Australasia or the Cape or South Africa, but in fact
they are independent Parliaments, absolutely independent, and
it is our business to recognize that and to frame the British
Empire upon the co-operation of absolutely independent
Parliaments.[28]
Which means, of course, that England's position with regard to Canada
or Australia is just England's position with regard to any other
independent State; that she has no more "ownership" in Australia than
she has in Argentina. Indeed, facts of very recent English history have
established quite incontrovertibly this ridiculous paradox: England has
more influence--that is to say, a freer opportunity of enforcing her
point of view--with foreign nations than with her own Colonies. Indeed,
does not Sir C. P. Lucas's statement that "whether they are right or
wrong--still more, perhaps, when they are wrong," they must be left
alone, necessarily mean that her position with the Colonies is weaker
than her position with foreign nations? In the present state of
international feeling an English Statesman would never dream of
advocating that she should submit to foreign nations when they are
wrong. Recent history is illuminating on this point.
What were the larger motives that pushed England into war with the Dutch
Republics? To vindicate the supremacy of the British race in South
Africa, to enforce British ideals as against Boer ideals, to secure the
rights of British Indians and other British subjects, to protect the
native against Boer oppression, to take the government of the country
generally from a people whom, at that date, she was apt to describe as
"inherently incapable of civilization." What, however, is the outcome of
spending a billion and a quarter of dollars upon the accomplishment of
these objects? The present Government of the Transvaal is in the hands
of the Boer party.[29] England has achieved the union of South Africa in
which the Boer element is predominant. Britain has enforced against the
British Indian in the Transvaal and Natal the same Boer regulations
which were one of her grievances before the war, and the Houses of
Parliament have ratified an Act of Union in which the Boer attitude with
reference to the native is codified and made permanent. Sir Charles
Dilke, in the debate in the House of Commons on the South African Bill,
made this quite clear. He said: "The old British principle in South
Africa, as distinct from the Boer principle, in regard to the treatment
of natives, was equal rights for all civilized men. At the beginning of
the South African War the country was told that one of its main objects,
and certainly that the one predominant factor in any treaty of peace,
would be the assertion of the British principle as against the Boer
principle. Now the Boer principle dominates throughout the whole of
South Africa." Mr. Asquith, as representing the British Government,
admitted that this was the case, and that "the opinion of this country
is almost unanimous in objecting to the color bar in the Union
Parliament." He went on to say that "the opinion of the British
Government and the opinion of the British people must not be allowed to
lead to any interference with a self-governing Colony." So that, having
expended in the conquest of the Transvaal a greater sum than Germany
exacted from France at the close of the Franco-Prussian War, England has
not even the right to enforce her views on those whose contrary views
were the _casus belli_!
A year or two since there was in London a deputation from the British
Indians in the Transvaal pointing out that the regulations there deprive
them of the ordinary rights of British citizens. The British Government
informed them that the Transvaal being a self-governing Colony, the
Imperial Government could do nothing for them.[30] Now, it will not be
forgotten that, at a time when Britain was quarrelling with Paul Krueger,
one of the liveliest of her grievances was the treatment of British
Indians. Having conquered Krueger, and now "owning" his country, do the
British themselves act as they were trying to compel Paul Krueger as a
foreign ruler to act? They do not. They (or rather the responsible
Government of the Colony, with whom they dare not interfere, although
they were ready enough to make representations to Krueger) simply and
purely enforce his own regulations. Moreover, the Australian
Commonwealth and British Columbia have since taken the view with
reference to British Indians which President Krueger took, and which view
England made almost a _casus belli_. Yet in the case of her Colonies she
does absolutely nothing.
So the process is this: The Government of a foreign territory does
something which we ask it to cease doing. The refusal of the foreign
Government constitutes a _casus belli_. We fight, we conquer, and the
territory in question becomes one of our Colonies, and we allow the
Government of that Colony to continue doing the very thing which
constituted, in the case of a foreign nation, a _casus belli_.
Do we not, taking the English case as typical, arrive, therefore, at the
absurdity I have already indicated--_that we are in a worse position to
enforce our views in our own territory--that is to say, in our
Colonies--than in foreign territory_?
Would England submit tamely if a foreign Government should exercise
permanently gross oppression on an important section of her citizens?
Certainly she would not. But when the Government exercising that
oppression happens to be the Government of her own Colonies she does
nothing, and a great British authority lays it down that, even more
when the Colonial Government is wrong than when it is right, must she do
nothing, and that, though wrong, the Colonial Government cannot be
amenable to force. Nor can it be said that Crown Colonies differ
essentially in this matter from self-governing dominions. Not only is
there an irresistible tendency for Crown Colonies to acquire the
practical rights of self-governing dominions, but it has become a
practical impossibility to disregard their special interests. Experience
is conclusive on this point.
I am not here playing with words or attempting to make paradoxes. This
_reductio ad absurdum_--the fact that when she owns a territory she
renounces the privilege of using force to ensure observance of her
views--is becoming more and more a commonplace of British colonial
government.
As to the fiscal position of the Colonies, that is precisely what their
political relation is in all but name; they are foreign nations. They
erect tariffs against Great Britain; they exclude large sections of
British subjects absolutely (practically speaking, no British Indian is
allowed to set foot in Australia, and yet British India constitutes the
greater part of the British Empire), and even against British subjects
from Great Britain vexatious exclusion laws are enacted. Again the
question arises: Could a foreign country do more? If fiscal preference
is extended to Great Britain, that preference is not the result of
British "ownership" of the Colonies, but is the free act of the colonial
legislators, and could as well be made by any foreign nation desiring
to court closer fiscal relations with Great Britain.[31]
Is it conceivable that Germany, if the real relations between Great
Britain and her Colonies were understood, would undertake the costliest
war of conquest in history in order to acquire an absurd and profitless
position from which she could not exact even the shadow of a material
advantage?
It may be pleaded that Germany might on the morrow of conquest attempt
to enforce a policy which gave her a material advantage in the Colonies,
such as Spain and Portugal attempted to create for themselves. But in
that case, is it conceivable that Germany, without colonial experience,
would be able to enforce a policy which Great Britain was obliged to
abandon a hundred years ago? Is it imaginable that, if Great Britain has
been utterly unable to carry out a policy by which the Colonies shall
pay anything resembling tribute to the Mother Country, Germany, without
experience, and at an enormous disadvantage in the matter of language,
tradition, racial tie, and the rest, would be able to make such a policy
a success? Surely, if the elements of this question were in the least
understood in Germany, such a preposterous notion could not be
entertained for a moment.
Does anyone seriously pretend that the present system of British
Colony-holding is due to British philanthropy or high-mindedness? We all
know, of course, that it is simply due to the fact that the older system
of exploitation by monopoly broke down. It was a complete social,
commercial, and political failure long before it was abolished by law.
If England had persisted in the use of force to impose a disadvantageous
situation on the Colonies, she would have followed in the trail of
Spain, Portugal, and France, and she would have lost her Colonies, and
her Empire would have broken up.
It took England anything from two to three centuries to learn the real
colonial policy, but it would not take so long in our day for a
conqueror to realize the only situation possible between one great
community and another. European history, indeed, has recently furnished
a striking illustration of how the forces which compel the relationship,
which England has adopted towards her Colonies, are operative, even in
the case of quite small Colonies, which could not be termed "great
communities." Under the Meline regime in France, less than twenty years
ago, a highly Protectionist policy, somewhat corresponding to the old
English colonial monopoly system, was enforced in the case of certain
French Colonies. None of these Colonies was very considerable--indeed,
they were all quite small--and yet the forces which they represented in
the matter of the life of France have sufficed to change radically the
attitude of the French Government in the matter of the policy which less
than twenty years ago was imposed on them. In _Le Temps_ of April 5,
1911, appeared the following:
Our Colonies can consider yesterday a red-letter day. The
debate in the Chamber gives hope that the stifling fiscal
policy imposed on them heretofore is about to be very greatly
modified. The Tariff Commission of the Chamber has hitherto
been a very citadel of the blindest type of Protectionism in
this matter. M. Thierry is the present President of this
Commission, and yet it is from him that we learn that a new era
in the Colonies is about to be inaugurated. It is a very great
change, and one that may have incalculable consequences in the
future development of our Colonial Empire.
The Customs Law of 1892 committed two injustices with regard to
our possessions. The first was that it obliged the Colonies to
receive, free of duty, goods coming from France, while it taxed
colonial goods coming into France. Now, it is impossible to
imagine a treaty of that kind being passed between two free
countries, and if it was passed with the Colonies, it was
because these Colonies were weak, and not in the position to
defend themselves _vis-a-vis_ the Mother Country.... The
Minister of the Colonies himself, animated by a newer and
better spirit, which we are so happy to see appear in our
treatment of colonial questions, has promised to give all his
efforts towards terminating the present bad system.
A further defect of the law of 1892 is that all the Colonies
have been subjected to the same fiscal arrangement, as though
there could be anything in common between countries separated
by the width of the whole globe. Happily the policy was too
outrageous ever to be put into full execution. Certain of our
African Colonies[32] were tied by international treaties at the
time that the law was voted, so that the Government was
compelled to make exceptions. But Monsieur Meline's idea at
this period was to bring all the Colonies under one fiscal
arrangement imposed by the Mother Country, just as soon as the
international treaty should have expired. The exceptions have
thus furnished a most useful demonstration as to the results
which flow from the two systems; the fiscal policy imposed by
the Mother Country in view merely of its own immediate
interest, and the fiscal policy framed to some extent by the
Colony in view of its own special interests. Well, what is the
result? It is this. That those Colonies which have been free to
frame their own fiscal policy have enjoyed undeniable
prosperity, while those which have been obliged to submit to
the policy imposed by another country have been sinking into a
condition of veritable ruin; they are faced by positive
disaster! Only one conclusion is possible. Each Colony must be
free to make those arrangements which in its view are suited to
its local conditions. That is not at all what M. Meline
desired, but it is what experience imposes.... It is not merely
a matter of injustice. Our policy has been absurd. What is it
that France desires in her Colonies? An addition of wealth and
power to the Mother Country. But if we compel the Colonies to
submit to disadvantageous fiscal arrangements, which result in
their poverty, how can they possibly be a source of wealth and
power to the Mother Country? A Colony which can sell nothing is
a Colony which can buy nothing: it is a customer lost to French
industry.
Every feature of the foregoing is significant and pregnant: this change
of policy is not taking place because France is unable to impose
force--she is perfectly able to do so; speaking in practical terms, the
Colonies have no physical force whatever to oppose to her--but this
change is taking place because the imposition of force, even when
completely successful and unchallenged, is economically futile. The
object at which France is striving can be obtained in one way only: by
an arrangement which is mutually advantageous, arrived at by the free
consent of both parties, the establishment of a relationship which
places a Colony fiscally, economically, on the footing of a foreign
country. France is now in process of doing exactly what England has done
in the case of her Colonies: she is undoing the work of conquest,
surrendering bit by bit the right to impose force, because force fails
in its object.
Perhaps the most significant feature of all in the French experience is
this: that it has taken less than twenty years for the old colonial
system, even in the case of small and relatively powerless Colonies, to
break down entirely. How long would a Power like Germany be able to
impose the old policy of exploitation on great and powerful communities,
a hundred times greater than the French Colonies, even supposing that
she could ever "conquer" them?[33]
Yet so little is the real relationship of modern Colonies understood,
that I have heard it mentioned in private conversation by an English
public man, whose position was such, moreover, as to enable him to give
very great effect to his opinion, that one of the motives pushing
Germany to war was the projected capture of South Africa, in order to
seize the gold-mines, and by means of a tax of 50 per cent. on their
output, secure for herself one of the chief sources of gold in the
world.
One heard a good deal at the outbreak of the South African War of the
part that the gold-mines played in precipitating that conflict. Alike in
England and on the Continent, it was generally assumed that Great
Britain was "after the gold-mines." A long correspondence took place in
the London _Times_ as to the real value of the mines, and speculation as
to the amount of money which it was worth Great Britain's while to spend
in their "capture." Well, now that England has won the war, how many
gold-mines has she captured? In other words, how many shares in the
gold-mines does the British Government hold? How many mines have been
transferred from their then owners to the British Government, as the
result of British victory? How much tribute does the Government of
Westminster exact as the result of investing two hundred and fifty
millions in the enterprise?
The fact is, of course, that the British Government does not hold a
cent's worth of the property. The mines belong to the shareholders and
to no one else, and in the conditions of the modern world it is not
possible for a Government to "capture" so much as a single dollar's
worth of such property as the result of a war of conquest.
Supposing that Germany or any other conqueror were to put on the output
of the mines a duty of 50 per cent. What would she get, and what would
be the result? The output of the South African mines to-day is, roughly,
$150,000,000 a year, so that she would get about $75,000,000 a year.[34]
The annual total income of Germany is calculated at something like
$15,000,000,000, so that a tribute of $75,000,000 would hold about the
same proportion to Germany's total income that, say, fifteen cents a day
would to a man in receipt of $10,000 a year. It would represent, say,
the expenditure of a man with an income of $2000 or $2500 a year upon,
say, his evening cigars. Could one imagine such a householder in his
right mind committing burglary and murder in order to economize a dollar
a week? Yet that would be the position of the German Empire entering
upon a great and costly war for the purpose of exacting $75,000,000 a
year from the South African mines; or, rather, the situation for the
German Empire would be a great deal worse than that. For this
householder having committed burglary and murder for the sake of his
dollar a week (the German Empire, that is, having entered into one of
the most frightful wars of history to exact its tribute of seventy-five
millions) would then find that in order to get this dollar he had to
jeopardize many of the investments upon which the bulk of his income
depended. On the morrow of imposing a tax of fifty per cent. on the
mines there would be such a slump in a class of security now dealt in by
every considerable stock exchange in the world that there would hardly
be a considerable business firm in Europe unaffected thereby. In
England, they know of the difficulty that a relatively mild fiscal
attack, delivered rather for social and moral than economic reasons,
upon a class of property like the brewing trade provokes. What sort of
outcry, therefore, would be raised throughout the world when every South
African mining share in the world lost at one stroke half its value, and
a great many of them lost all their value? Who would invest money in the
Transvaal at all if property were to be subject to that sort of shock?
Investors would argue that though it be mines to-day, it might be other
forms of property to-morrow, and South Africa would find herself in the
position of being able hardly to borrow a quarter for any purpose
whatsoever, save at usurious and extortionate rates of interest. The
whole of South African trade and industry would, of course, feel the
effect, and South Africa as a market would immediately begin to dwindle
in importance. Those businesses bound up with South African affairs
would border on the brink of ruin, and many of them topple over. Is that
the way efficient Germany would set about the development of her
newly-acquired Empire? She would soon find that she had a ruined Colony
on her hands. If in South Africa the sturdy Dutch and English stock did
not produce a George Washington with a better material and moral case
for independence than George Washington ever had, then history has no
meaning. If it costs England a billion and a quarter to conquer Dutch
South Africa, what would it cost Germany to conquer Anglo-Dutch South
Africa? Such a policy could not, of course, last six months, and Germany
would end by doing what Great Britain has ended by doing--she would
renounce all attempt to exact a tribute or commercial advantage other
than that which is the result of free co-operation with the South
African people. In other words, she would learn that the policy which
Great Britain has adopted was not adopted by philanthropy, but in the
hard school of bitter experience. Germany would see that the last word
in colonial statesmanship is to exact nothing from your Colonies, and
where the greatest colonial power of history has been unable to follow
any other policy, a poor intruder in the art of colonial administration
would not be likely to prove more successful, and she, too, would find
that the only way to treat Colonies is to treat them as independent or
foreign territories, and the only way to own them is to make no attempt
at exercising any of the functions of ownership. All the reasons which
gave force to this principle in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
have been reinforced a hundredfold by the modern contrivances of credit
and capital, quick communication, popular government, popular press, the
conditions and cost of warfare--the whole weight, indeed, of modern
progress. It is not a question here of theorizing, of the erection of an
elaborate thesis, nor is it a question of arguing what the relations of
Colonies ought to be. The differences between the Imperialist and the
Anti-imperialist do not enter into the discussion at all. It is simply a
question of what the unmistakable outstanding facts of experience have
taught, and we all know, Imperialists and their opponents alike, that
whatever the relations with the Colonies are to be, that relationship
must be fixed by the free consent of the Colonies, by their choice, not
ours. Sir J.R. Seeley notes in his book, "The Expansion of England,"
that because the early Spanish Colonies were in a true sense of the word
"possessions," Britons acquired the habit of talking of "possessions"
and "ownership," and their ideas of colonial policy were vitiated during
three centuries, simply by the fatal hypnotism of an incorrect word. Is
it not time that we shook off the influence of those disastrous words?
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, are not "possessions."
They are no more possessions than is Argentina or Brazil, and the nation
which conquered England, which even captured London, would be hardly
nearer to the conquest of Canada or Australia than if it happened to
occupy Constantinople or St. Petersburg. Why, therefore, do we tolerate
the loose talk which assumes that the master of London is also master of
Montreal, Vancouver, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Melbourne, and Sydney?
Have we not had about enough of this ignorant chatter, which is
persistently blind to the simplest and most elementary facts of the
case? And have not the English, of all people of the world, a most
direct interest in aiding the general realization of these truths in
Europe? Would not that general realization add immensely to the security
of their so-called Empire?