Evening Post. SATURDAY, MARCH 5 ,1927. IMPERATIVE OBLIGATION

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 54, 5 March 1927, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, MARCH 5 ,1927. IMPERATIVE OBLIGATION

In the Pageant of the Queens of Britain which forms one of the most brilliant parts of the Military Tattoo now showing at Newtown Park nobody could reasonably cavil at the place assigned to Boadicea. Though she was never Queen of Britain, but only of a small part of it now represented by the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, she was the first of British Queens to attain any eminence, and in spirit and picturesque interest she yields to none of her successors. The revolt of the Iceni against Roman rule was provoked by the shameless greed and brutality of the conquerors. Cowper's description of their warrior Queen as "bleeding from the Roman rods" was literally correct, and her daughter had been subjected to still fouler treatment. In open warfare the Britons were no match for the Roman legions, but the revolt was not quelled till the three most important centres of Roman wealth and power in that part of England—Colchester, Verulam (St. Albans), and London—had been captured and destroyed, and 70,000 of the inhabitants massacred. A special interest of the occasion is that it drew from a Roman historian what Dr. Hodgkin says is the first mention of London in history. Describing the rapidity, with which the news of the revolt brought Suetonius, the Roman commander, from the Menai Straits to the scene of the disaster, Tacitus says:—

With marvellous constancy ho marched through tho midst of "enemies to Londinium, n place which is not indeed dignified 1 with the name of colony, but which is greatly celebrated for the number of its merchants and the abundance of its supplies.

There appears to be good ground for supposing that London may have come into existence as the seaport of Verulam, which was a British capital. Under the Romans in A.D. 60 Verulam as a "lnunicipium" was still the more important place. London, though not yet even a "colonia," was a busy little centre of commerce and was doing guile well for a beginner.

Another interesting contrast is suggested by the appearance of Boadicea in Ncwtown Park. Even more strikingly than her statue at Westminster does her introduction lo such surroundings illustrate the changes that have befallen her country and the progress which gave it first internal unity and then a unity which embraces more than a quarter both of the globe and of its population. When the soldiers of Claudius were under orders to leave Gaul for Britain they grumbled bitterly at the prospect of military service "outside the habitable world." But their reluctance was overcome, and the invincible power of Rome helped lo make Britain habitable. In due course that power departed from Britain and suffered complete eclipse, but after a long interval Britain herself took up the civilising mission which had been the glory of ancient Rome. By the labours of Britain lands of which the Romans had never heard or dreamed have been opened up and endowed with better government, freer institutions, and a happier life than were possible under the conditions of the ancient world. One of the remotest and happiest of these lands is our own, and nowhere is there a more imperative obligation to recall from time to lime the glories of the great nation to which we belong, and our indebtedness to what previous generations have done and suffered in order that the lines might fall for us in such pleasant places,

One side of Britain's greatness as a World Power is happily indicated hy Cowper in the prophecy which he puts into the mouth of the Druid priest consulted by Boadicea when she meditated revolt. Rome, was the reply, would one day totter and fall:

Thou tlio progeny that springs From tlio forests of our land, Armed with thunder, clad with wings, Shall a wider world command. Regions Caesar never know They posterity shall sway, Whero his eagles never flew, None invincible as they. The wooden ships of England, "armed with thunder, clad with wings," have enabled her to carry her power all round the world, and even to lands such as ours which were barely above the horizon even in Cowper's day. It is not power, however, or territory or wealth that is the real glory of Britain's part in the drama of world politics, but law and liberty and service.- It is true that in the days of the good Queen Bess —whose absence, by the way, from the Pageant of British Queens we are unable to understand—filibustering and Imperial expansion were-: sometimes convertible terms, and the record has not been flawless since. But through all the blunders and all the blots there has gradually emerged such a conception of trusteeship and responsibility in government, such a tradition of disinterested and efficient service as the world has not seen outside the British Empire. It is in lliis attitude towards the weaker races and in the free admission to partnership of the communities of

its own blood that Britain's highest title to glory consists. Not the vulgar worship of power but the honour due to a service of this kind is the inspiration of the new Imperialism, and it will be strengthened both by the Searchlight Tattoo and by the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York. Those who scent in a loyal address to Their Royal Highnesses will of course take it for granted in a display which is called military. But we should like g.ny candid objector of this kind to see for himself, and then say whether what the "Times" said of the great Wembley Tattoo is not equally true of one that is very closely modelled upon it:

In some quarters it has been maliciously or stupidly criticised as tending to a glorification of militarism; but no criticism could bo wider of the mark. Instead of arousing passion, it acts, as the final scene culminates, purgatively like some great tragedy in the ancient sense; and the moral, in so far as the Tattoo is drama enough to convey one, is elementary, fundamental, and "essential, if a State is to retain its coherency, its power, and its sanity Yet there is nothing in it. which would injure the most delicate foreign susceptibility. The actors may, and do, belong to military organisations, but the illusion with which the whole pageant is invested is such as to transfigure them in the eyes of spectators into types or. much that is necessary in the lite of a nation and of the individual