HISTORICAL CONFLICT

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 4, 5 July 1926, Page 5

HISTORICAL CONFLICT

IMPERIALISM OR NATIONALITY?

A good attendance greeted Mr. P. J. O'Regan when he spoke last evening under the auspices'of the Irish Republican Association, taking for his subject "Imperialism or Nationality?" Mr. D. Griffin was in the chair. The speaker held that history was largely made by the conflict between nationality and Imperialism, of which nationality bad been first m the held. Imperialism was a military term derived from the Roman Empire, and its continuance made international peace a vain hope, because Imperialism implied conquest on one side and subjection on the other. Ine self-respect which was the heritage ot mankind and in itself a God-given quality, impelled men to protest against subjection. Hence it was that Gibbon had said that "the history of empire is the record of human misery," and it was because he read the lessons of history aright that John Stuart Mill had held it axiomatic that though one nation, calling itselE the superior, may for a time govern another, nation, such a state of affairs could never become permanent, and no matter how , long it continued, must be regarded as tern- j porary. The principles of morality and justice did not change from age to age, but were ever the same, and hence it remained a truth for all time that the only permanent and just basis of government was the consent of the governed, aud no people would ever consent to be governed save by themselves. Doubtless there were well-meaning people who thought it possible to reconcile Imperialism with a warless world, but a warless world was impossible, unless nations recognised the right of their neighbour nations to govern themselves in their own way. We never associated war or rumours of war with such nations as Denmark, Sweden, Norway, or Switzerland, because these were non-Imperial nations who acted on the great principle that nations should be neighbourly, and it was certainly an awkward fact for Imperialists that the people of those nations were better off individually, though perhaps less wealthy in the aggregate, than the mass of the people in the proudest empire. The principles of justice which men should observe towards each other in every civilised community were equally binding on nations. The functions of nations were twofold—to trade with each other and to influence each other by their example. If there I wore fifty millions of people in Australia, for example, not only would Australia be richer but so would Now Zealand, because of the increased demand for her goods, and what was true of Australia and New Zealand was equally true of England and Ireland. Hence the impartial student of human affairs must condemn aggression everywhere—of the Italians in Tripoli, the Americans in the Philippines, the French and Spaniards in Morocco, the British in Egypt. It was because the people of this country were obsessed by the heresy of Imperialism that an admiral who-was accorded a civic reception at Auckland not long since could take advantage of the occasion to make an attack on the League of Nations. Because of the same obsession we had seenj recently in this city a naval propagandist lecturing in the schools and repeating the wicked sophistry that preparations for war were the best means of achieving peace. Sir Robert Peel, a Conservative leader, and one of file greatest figures in British political history, had denounced that ancient fallacy—borrowed like many other evil ideas from Roman militarism— in the strongest terms, and Lord Grey of Fallodon, in his Memoirs recently published, had condemned it in language that could not well be made stronger. He apologised for bracketing the local propagandist with Sir Robert Peel and Lord Grey, and he considered particularly humiliating that the sons of Irishmen should be obliged to listen to such inexcusable nonsense. Dealing with the relationship of the colonies to the British Empire, the speaker said that all valid precedents were derived from principle, and there was neither principle nor precedent for such a wild phantasy as Imperial Federation. On the contrary, there was precedent for the proposition that a colony is not necessarily a dependency, for the Greek colonies, the first we knew of in history, by whose means civilisation had been carried along the shores of the Mediterranean, were independent from the outset, and it had been aptly pointed out by more than one historical critic that had the Pilgrim Fathers gone forth as the Greek colonists had, there would have been no war between England and America. The future was in the hands of Providence, but it was safe to predict that a generation would arise in these colonies who would resent the absurd notion that the international status of Belgium, the government of Mesopotamia or the Balkans, the internal politics of South Africa, or the sovereignly of Alsace Vind Lorraine were any concern of ours. "We are here," said the speaker, "not to govern the world 'from China to Peru,' not to engage in schemes of worldwide ambition, but to earn our bread and mind our own business." The lecturer ■ traced at length the granting of selfgovernment to the colonies, arguing that all parties were agreed that the colonies must ultimately become independent nations, and that no man had given more emphatic expression to that view than Disraeli, though he subsequently pretended to be a great Imperialist. A number of questions wore answered, after which the speaker was accorded a hearty vote of thanks.