EMPIRE DAY

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 50, 27 August 1930, Page 17

EMPIRE DAY

HOW IT CAME TO PASS

DUE TO EARL OF MEATH

CAMPAIGN' OF YEAES

(By Eudolph fle Cordova.)

(Copyright:)

"Wherever the 'MElag'. that's braved a thousand years, the battle and the breeze" flies .free to-day, there the heart oi" every British subject should glow with pride, for it is Empire Day. Its motto, conceived bythe lato Earl of Meath, K.P., who founded it and lived to see it an established fact, is ''one king, one flag, one fleet, one Empire." Like the oak, it sprung from a very small acorn idea. About the year 1890, a vicar >yhom Lord Meath know, feeling that he was not sufficiently acquainted with the youth of his .congreg'SSioji. determined to give them a monthly tea and asked the Earl to go to the first meeting. Ho did. The Yicar,-deUvered an address which a£ %oii\ -Me.a%'..ohco,'. t.o^ nic," "was noij even a'serraon in disguise." Lord M!eath hiniseif. poured out the tea. and handed "the cakes'and when asked to speak instead of following the host's leadj thinking what he would have liked at their age,, he told the boys stories about the men who had won the Victoria Cross during the Indian Mutiny. They responded, as ho had hoped, to those tales of heroism, but when he came to question them, he found, to his dismay that they were exceedingly ignorant of everything connected with the history of the country.' .■;■-. This fact was impressed so forcibly on him later when he began to make further inquiries elsewhere that he brought the matter to the notice of the House of Lords. His subsequent inquiries obtained by travelling through the country proved conclusively not only that tho pupils, but also that many of the masters were without any real knowledge of what the British Empire was. .-. INVESTIGATIONS. Determined to extond his investigations of a problem in which he had now -become greatly interested, he and Lady Meath visited most' of the self -governing portions of .the Empire and onado many speeches on the subject. On his return home he started an office in his own house and with Lady Meath spent about £5000 a year on the work. It was not, however, until 1896, after being in his mind for 34 years that the idea of Empire Day as.its exists, formulated itself and in the following year Ontario legalised the movement and organised Empire Day throughout the colony. : Encouraged by that success, Lord Meath, first in 1899 and again in 1902 approached the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, and suggested that Queen Victoria's Birthday, 24th May, should be observed as a holiday, when the .children is* all tho schools should spond the morning in patriotic exercises and listening to lectures on Imperial subjects. ' : Mr. Chamberlain1 advised him • to bring tho matter to the notice of the representatives of the constituent portions of the Empire, and Lord Meath tlioroupon wrote letters to all the Prime Ministers and Governors, as! well as the leading princes of India, asking them to assist in establishing an Empire Day celebration to' be"oß'served .By all the countries yielding \ allcgianco to the British flag. From everywhere the desired favourable reply came, and the watchwords of tho movement, "Responsibility, duty, sympathy, and solfsaerifico" were formulated. Thus heartened, Lord Meath made a speech in the House of Lords on tho necessity of Imperial knowledge being given to the then 400,000,000 subjects included in the Empire. A CAMPAIGN. Two years later, at St. James's Hall, the first important public meeting' was held in support of Empire Day and many important men ■ attended it. In Ms speech,' Lord Meath emphasised the fact that everywhere on that day all Britons should consider the duties and responsibilities which belonged to.them, as British subjects, and that.no effort should be spared to teach the young the history, power, extent, and resources of the Empire; that Empire, ho pointed out is really a united company of Empires, whoso area, like its population, is roughly a quarter that df the world. In 1906, the Australian Commonwealth agreed to accept the movement. Commenting on this fact the "Standard" wrote: "The result' is the establishment of a festival, having a deep, underlying meaning and purpose. It will represent a very real and peirmanent bond of citizenship and patriotism, uniting .the peoples, widely separated though they be, in the greatest Empire that the world has ever seen."! Eleven years later, in 1916, although the war was then raging, Lord Grewe, on behalf of the Government, announced that the King had officially sanctioned the observance of Empire Day by ordering the Union Jack to be flown from all public buildings within the United Kingdom on 24th May. That ceremonial has been observed over since. Just as patriotism is taught daily in the United States by the ceremonious hoisting of the flag, and its salute by the children in all the schools, so, since Empire Day was founded) the same procedure has been adopted on that day, the National Anthem and other Empire songs are sung and the Empire catechism is'repeated. In this way the children ;of to-day wh6 will be the men and women of to-morrow are having inculcated in their miuds and in their hearts that privilege .which is theirs in being subjects of the Empire on which the sun never sets.