Evening Post. SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1926. TWO EMPIRES

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 13, 16 January 1926, Page 6

Evening Post. SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1926. TWO EMPIRES

It is not often that the work of the Classical Association is brought into close touch with contemporary affairs, but in the interesting and ominous "analogy between the fall of ancient Koine and the present position of the British Empire" which he has drawn in his address to the association Mr. Stanley Baldwin may b§. said to have done so. There was lit least one striking precedent. As' President of the Classical Association for the year 1909-10, Lord Cromer delivered an address which, as subsequently expanded into a volume with the title "Ancient and Modern Imperialism," appeals almost equally to the classical scholar, the student of Empire, and the ordinary educated reader. In his intimate familiarity with classical literature and history and his long experience in the administration of what had been one of the great Eoman provinces Lord Cromer had a unique combination of qualifications for the task. Having retired from his Egyptian pro-consulship, he had also the essential qualification of leisure. The lack of leisure would alone suffice to prevent a man so over-burdened as the British Prime Minister from expanding his thoughts on the subject into an octavo volume of 150 pages during his term of office. But even our brief cabled summary shows that Mr. Baldwin has not failed to find time for the composition of a stimulating and thought-provoking address.

"In a sense," says Lord Cromer, "it may be said that Imperialism is as old as the world." Modern research has been steadily pushing its date further and further back. The Empire of the Hyksos extendA ed from the Euphrates to the Nile. Professor Breasted is quoted by Lord Cromer as calling Thothmes 111. of Egypt (1500 8.C.) "the first gieat empire-builder of the world and the true forerunner of Alexander and Napoleon." Almost daily the spade is adding to the wonders of the great Cretan, empire which; when Lord Cromer and Mr. Baldwin were at school, was little better than a myth. "Many centuries later," -says Lord Cromer, "the boastful and incompetent Xerxes aimed at universal empire." The Athenian democracy made a brilliant attempt which in the course of about two generations ended in deserved failure. Alexander of Macedon carried his invincible arms to Persia and India, but died before he could show whether he had administrative and constructive powers to match his military genius. On the heels of the Macedonian phalanx" followed the Roman legion, representing not a great leader but a great people, and bringing with it a great civilisation. The little village on the Tiber had at first held its own with difficulty against its rivals in the same neighbourhood. Having put them down, it gradually grew in power and in territory until the addition of city after city and province after province brought the whole of Italy within the ltoman State. Outside of Italy the same inexorable process was set in motion to the north and to the south, to the east and to the west, and despite occasional checks it did not stop till it had annexed the greater part of the then known world. The area of the Kornau Empire in the time of Tnijon was estimated by Lord Bryce to br. 2,600,000 square miles, and the pb|.iitl.itl;i.t?i} 100,000, iron, JU war; 411 iwmeune aud tox tauuy

years an all-powerful and, notwithstanding the territorial division between the sons of Theodosius, it endured for more than a thousand years.

The story of its ruin, says Gibbon, ia simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Boman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it subsisted so long.

The genius of the ancient Romans for law, order, and organisation, their indomitable resolution in defeat, their tolerance of social and religious differences which did cot directly strike at the purposes of their government, and their skill in assimilating inferior races were among the secrets of their power. On the first three points the resemblance between their character and methods and those of the British race is very close; on the fourth it is admitted that they are without a rival. "No modern Imperialist nation," says Lord Cromer, "has shown powers of assimilation at all comparable to those displayed by the Romans." They were aided by the absence of any colour bar against intermarriage, and by the relative mildness of the national and religious antagonisms with which they had to deal. The Jews were, of course, an exception, and with them the tolerance and the cruelty of the Romans were equally unavailing. But the exception only serves to emphasise, the general immunity which the Romans enjoyed frbm one of the gravest embarrassments of modern statesmanship.

It was, says Sir Alfred Lyall, the advent of two great militant and propagating faiths—first Christianity, next Islam—that first made religion a vital element in politics, and afterwards made a common creed the bond of union for great masses of mankind.

" Mr. Baldwin," according to our report, "quoted Dr. Mackail to the effect that in the end there were insufficient Romans to carry on the work of Borne." If our own Empire is to fail from a similar shortage, it will certainly be under utterly different conditions. In "The Nemesis of Nations" Mr. W. R. Paterson gives the following vivid summary of the causes of Rome's decline :■—

The Emperor Constantine carried to its logical conclusion,: the military policy of Augustus and caJused the bodies of the soldiers to be branded like slaves as a sign that they were Imperial property. But here again we see that a fighting force, however efficient, if it be detached from the nation is no proper bulwark. The victories of Stilicho and of Aetius, although brilliant, did not save a people who were content to fight by proxy and had begun to mutilate themselves in order to escape military service. . . . Italy ceased to be productive and depended for her food supply on the labour of thousands of slaves in the harvest, fields of Africa and Sicily. And in the city a worthless population waited like beggars on the Imperial alms in the form of wheat, pork, oil, and v;ine. Like Athens, Rome had become the parasite of her subject peoples. Like Athens, too, she suffered from a deficit in men. The birth-rate steadily declined both during the Republic and the Empire. Lastly, and worst of all, she lost the art in which she had excelled—the E;reat art of government. A strange decay of the faculty of administration had occurred since Virgil wrote that it was Rome's mission to spare the vanquished and to humble the proud. The vanquished had not been spared. The provinces were milked to death. Rome had accepted the fascinating and perilous gift of Imperialism, but she had not fulfilled all its obligations.