The Miracle of the Empire.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15338, 23 July 1915, Page 6

The Miracle of the Empire.

The speech by Mr'Bonar Law, in which the unity of the Empire and tho eagerness of the free Dominions, of the Crown colonies, and of India to join old England in her bloody fight for freedom, and the continuity of civilisation, is one which it is good to read. Yet we think that it. will be more highly appreciated •in Britain than in tho young Dominions, and ' this for a reason, which will fill with awe the historians of the centuries yet to be. We in these young countries, most of us. aro missing, or nearly missing, a great pleasure of heart and head which is felt by all thinking people in tho Mother Country. They aro filled with wonder, joy. and thankfulness at the tremendous testimony of this war to tho unmixed and measureless devotion of all parts of the Empire to tho cause of Britain. To tho Dominions all this wonder and joy and thankfulness are hardly comprehensible, for it is inconceivable to them that tho Dominions could possibly do anything but throw themselves into tho war. Yet, natural and inevitable as it appears to the colonial that the colonies should fly to arms for Britain's sake, it is actually not inevitable, and not actually natural, that vigorous young i nations, as free n« the air, owing no allegiance* to any naino excepting tho name their hearts may choose, scattered round tho globe, populated by j millions who have never seen and never will see a certain island Power far away, should, through all tho sophistication of development in a very material age, keep as their highest passion an inextinguishable attachment to that distant Power This is a miracle, if ever a miracle has happened o n the earth. It is because tho people of Britain and tho people of Europe, the children of history, arc unconsciously moulded by the vicissitudes and sorrows and disillusions of centuries, aud have no precedents to help them, that they realise better than tho young British nations oversea that the active unity of the Empire is the most wonderful thing that men have ever beheld. Tho Germans were not straining the teachings of history, but were showing that they had studied their history to good > purpose, when they predicted that the colonies would drop away from Britain, that the coloured races of the.Empiro would rebel, and that tho Boers would jump at their opportunity to rerongo therajg icaj; ■flirt only solution that

could l>o worked out from the tangible data of history. But it is the wrong solution, «_•> all the world has seen, for all the data are not tangible. The answer to the problem of how war would find the Empire is that it found tho Empire as it is drawn in an eloquent passage in Mr Churchill's Liverpool Hpeech:— I "I would advise you," ho said, "from i time to time, when you are anxious or I depressed, to dwell a little on the colour and light of the terrible war pictures now presented to the eyo. Sec Australia and New Zealand smiting down in the last and finest Crusado the combin<xl barbarisms of Prussia and of Turkey. See General Louis Botha holding South Afrira for the Kinjr. See Cap.ada defending to the death the last few miles of shattered Belgium. Look further, and across the snioko and carnage of the immense battlefield, look forward to tho vision of a united British Empire on the cahn background of a liberated Europe. Then turn again to your task. Look forward. Do not lookbnck. Gather afresh in heart and spirit all the energies of your being. Jsend anew together fop a supreme effort. Tho times are harsh. The need js dire. The agony of Europe is infinite. But the might of Britain, hurled united into the conflict, will be irresistible. We aro the grand reserve of the Allied cause, and that grand reserve must now march forward as one. man." It would be difficult, and it is net necessary, to discover all the influences which have inndo the Empire v/hat it is. It is certainly not communion of race, for the Empire is a fabric of all the races, nor of law or religion. Perhaps there has, after all, been nothing more at work than tho great principle of human liberty which lias governed the development of the Empire. The- huge powers concealed in that principle were foreseen far more than a century since by a great Englishman. There was more of the seer than of tho political philosopher in the.immortal passage in that speech of Burkes 140 years ago: "As long as you have the wisdom to keep tho sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of'liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever tho chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they lqvo liberty, the moro perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can havo anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But. until you btcomo lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom tney can have from none but you. This is tho commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is tho true act of navigation which binds to you the commerco of the colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that solo bond, which originally made, and must* etill preserve, tho unity of the Empire. Do not entertain so weak an imagination, as that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, your cockets and your clearances, are what form the great securities of your eonvmorco. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your ins£ructions. nnd your suspending clauses, are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These, things ds not make your government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they aro, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to tfiom. It is the spirit of tho English Constitution, which, infused through tho miochty mass, _t>ervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, unifies every pnrt of the Empire, even down to the minutest member."