Two Views of Empire.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17939, 6 December 1923, Page 8

Two Views of Empire.

We made a brief reference a few weeks ago to a series of articles on the future of the British Empire written by Mr H. G. Weils. Prepared in the first place for "The Empire Review," they were published simultaneously in most of the I>ominions, and provoked a good deal of discussion. Now the samegroup of papers is publishing a reply by Mr Winston Churchill, as cleverly practical as the opinions of Mr Wells were philosophically vague, and unfortunately just as "superior." Mr Wells, for example, seemed to desire to kick away at once the scaffolding on which the "population of this crowded and •'precariously-conditioned island" [of Great Britain] still stand as they build their temple of liberty. Mr Churchill says that if the Empire listened to Mr Wells the outlook would be "bleak "indeed." The best that could be hoped for would be that "under the "aegis of the Labour Party Britain " should be merged more or less peace- " fully and painlessly in some sort of "world federation." The inheritance accumulated by the thrift and effort of so many centuries would bo " liquidated, and generously shared "with all nations." A League of Nations on which we should be an. impotent minority would regulate everything for us—production and distribution of standard products, transport, and even the movements of population. Mr Churchill draw 3 a grimly amusing picture- of the Federal Body compelling

our Mercantile Marine to share Its profits with the Swiss, who have done nothing not to deserve them hut live in a land-locked republic, and ordering our Colonial Office to give a share in the administration of our Indian and African possessions to Belgian, Russian, Turkish, French, German, Brazilian, and Peruvian officials until the local populations had reached a stage in their development at which Mr Wells could entrust them with the management of their own affairs. And he confesses that he views without enthusiasm the transfer to stranger hands of the'means of "keeping together the '•body and soul of forty millions "dwelling in the British Isles." But he is most vigorous in his exposure of the "limitations of a 'consistent "Eepuhlican.' " The republicanism that in the early eighties was "thought " a clever fad" has, he says, long since lost "even this pinchbeck dis"tinction." Beginning by scoring Mr Wells for not knowing that the British Monarchy bears no relation whatever to the personal despotisms of bygone centuries—for forgetting that "the "Sovereign reigns hut does not "govern"; that "the prerogatives of "the Crown have become the privileges "of the people" —he proceeds to a clear, confident, and certainly sound justification of a constitutional system that gives ue "the best of urrS? "worlds," a thoroughly modern and democratic practice, with the traditions and ceremonial of an immemorial past. Instead of allowing his soul to be lacerated and poisoned by "the reflec-' " tion that he is the subject of a " King-Emperor, all the colour fading "out of the landscape as he ponders '' on the degradation and servile status " to which he is condemned," Mr Wells should ask himself whether what was satisfactory to Chatham, to Burke, to Fox, to Gladstone, could not somehow be made agreeable to "the proud spirit "of Citizen Hoopdriver." And for a last word —prophetic, as it has proved these last few days-—Mr Churchill attacks the "airs of intellectual superior- " ity which 'advanced thinkers' are ac- " customed to give themselves" while the world is passing to "the rule of. " the ruffian." Mr Wells, of course, is not a ruffian, but as Mr Churchill sees him he is (politically) a narrow, shallow, misguided doctrinaire, and the aider, therefore, and abettor of ruffians. On Friday, perhaps, the ruffians will say what they think of Mr Churchill.