A NEW "MISSING WORD" COMPETITION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 120, 22 May 1900, Page 5

A NEW "MISSING WORD" COMPETITION.

WANTED, A SUBSTITUTE FOR

"COLONIAL?"

The "Academy" has started a new "missing word" competition, the missing word being a term that will in- j chide all members of the Brtish Em- j p i re —English, Scotch, Irish, and Colonial alike. Mr Arnold White, in a long letter, says that the Canadians are no now more colonists, than the ■inhabitants of Kent.- In Australia, the affected assumption of superiority by New Chums over "colonists" is bitterly resented, and the stony stare of the British administrator in dealing- with the inhabitants of Britain beyond the sea has been the raw material of. rebellion for 140 years. The term "colony" implies servitude, inferiority, suzerainty, subordination of lesser breeds in a lower state to that of the high mightiness of the Mother Country. If the British people wish to federate the British Empire, there is no tie more effective than the abolition of the words "colony" and'"coldnists," nnd the frank and whole-hearted acceptance of the idea that the man in Ottawa or King Williams Town is no less a Britain or a Britisher than the m»n who reads his "Daily Mail" on the top of the Beckham omnibus, or takes his morning gallop in the Row. The word "Briton" excludes the Canadian, the South African, or the. .ustralasian. "Britisher" is the only word that satisfactorily includes the whole of the Anglo-Saxon race, nnd even then the Celtic Irish may consider themselves excluded. The need for a continous foreign policy, the necessity for raising the social and educational standard of all classes throughout the Empire, and the certainty that the tendency of British thought is to grow more like that of Canada and Australia than the daughter nations to become like that of England, emphasise the importance of discovering a word without further delay that-shall be finally accepted as descriptive of Queen's men and women all over the world. I do not like the term "Britisher." It smacks too much of. the United States and of the contemptuous tone ill' which the Yankees first used it. What is wrong with "Briton?" It is shorl. comprehensive, and might well be adopted for the whole Empire, every member of which is a "British" subject. One wise acre would have it that the colonies are Only colonies because they are not included in the Royal Arms. Neither is India, but the Oueen is Empress none the less. But in these days of democracy there is too much of the nomenclature of the days of the Divine attributes of kings, emperors, princes and potentates. "Sovereign. Emperor. Empire. Imperial" are beginning- to be inst a trifle mediaeval, if not for England, for +he rest of the Empire nt all events. The stately dignity and npnroprinten"«s nf the term' "Commonwealth" for United Australia is in reF^eshino- contrast to those high-smindiris. but antiquated and out of. dale expressions,