CHANGED OUTLOOK

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 109, 5 November 1934, Page 9

CHANGED OUTLOOK

JINGOISM DEAD THE OLD IMPERIALISM MERELY'A ROMANCE (By Dean Inge.) jSTo. V. I have left to the last, one oi' the most important changes that I have witnessed. It gathers round the words patriotism, Imperialism, war, and peace. No one who witnessed tlio 1807 jubilee can ever forgot it. It was a magnificent and arrogant spectacle Kings and princes in gorgeous' uniforms; contingents of troops from every corner of the earth, all assembled to do homage to ■,' the greatest Empire .of all times, the ' dominion on which the sun never sots — and soldom rises, said tho French, who think we live in perpetual fog.' I watched tho procession, and tho crowds of spectators, and I was not deceived. This, I said to myself, is the last flare-up of an. expiring ideal. We are not a military or a conquering race. Our Imperialism, so raucously vocal in the eighties and nineties, is just the romance of the drab dwellers in suburbia, a generous vision of national glory, but with no root in, the hard soil of fact. The century of British ascendancy, which began with ■ Watorloo, is approaching its cud. Our home base is too small, and tho will to power is wanting in tho masses., Soon after this came the Boer War, and general disillusionment. Wo made ourselves very unpopular in an inglorious campaign in -which - tiro hundred thousand, British had great difficulty in crushing the resistance of '' a few thousand men in their shirts." Wo painted another pieco of the- map red, but" it was not a pleasant job. The Great "War was sprung upon us. Nobody wanted to fight, and wo knew from the first that we had everything to lose and nothing to'gain. The nation behaved splendidly; but when it was over there was no "Maf eking," no .jubilation; and tho men who fought never talk about their experiences. This alone marks a great chango in our ways of thinking. Where is tho braggar^ captain of comedy, who likes to "fight his battles o'er again"? We English do not stand .upon the point of honour, like a Spanish hidalgo. Nothing is more characteristic than tho Duke of Wellington's story of how a Spanish general refused to join in an operation planned by tho Duke unless the English general asked him on his knees. "I wanted tho thing done" (so ■ the Duko told the story),."and I did not care a twopenny damn about going on my kneos, so .down I plumped." If no vital interest is at stako, or' if the gamo is not worth the candle, we always give way. After a victory wo shake hands with the enemy and get out of uniform as qnickly aa wo can. ".There' are not endugh troops in England to bury a-field-marshal,", said tho Duke a few years after Waterloo. . MAINTAINING THE EMPIRE/ There is also a growing feeling that we do not want unwilling subjects. This really means the *nd of tho British Empire. There may still be a Commonwealth ofNations^but it is an alliance, not a federation, and if any province wishes to secede, it looks as if we were prepared to let it go. ■ But those who are willing to throw away tho Empire1 with both hands should remember the American Civil War. Tho South wished .to bo independent, and tho North hammered them ruthlessly for four years until they were beaten flat. .There is no secession movement in tho United States today; Lincoln saved his country by a policy of unyielding coercion. Our difficulty is that thero are'many Englishmen who arc friends of every country except their own. Wo differ, it seems, from other misguided rascals in never being in the right even by accident. -' But the Great War finished jingoism once for all. A war between great European nations is not only a monstrous crime, but a monstrous folly. It is in a sense a civil wax1, since we are all •sharers in the same culture. The nations do not hato each other unless they are goaded into animosity by lying propa-' s>anda. Victory in such a war is almost as disastrous as defeat. For. what can the victors gain? All tho Tropics and the blacks who inhabit them are not worth a tenth of what a great \war costs. And if our chief rival and our best customer own the same head, it is not good bu&iness to cut that head off. To seize tho products of the enemy's indnstry only creates unemployment at home, and if wo keep him impoverished he- cannot pay an indemnity. To annex part of his territory means, to a • certainty, another war in the future. To gain theso nugatory ends the •nations are asked to give tho lives of their best childron,. not by tho thousand, but by the million. Thoy are asked to acquiesce in horrors which have never been committed on a large scale since the- beginning of civilisation, and whi»h threaten to be far worse if war breaks out again. In consequence we are nearly all agreed now that war is an utterly accursed thing, which need not exist and should be extirpated. This was not Hie view taken fifty years ago, when drum and trumpet histories proclaimed the invinciblo might and valour of tho nation to which the historian belonged. Bnt, unfortunately, in spite of the pro* verb, it takes only one to make a quarrel, and if we wish to disarm, can we be sure of our neighbours? . , There are nations, like Hungary, burning under a sense of injustice, who are ready to fight tomorrow. And I fear that three of the Great .Powers — America, France, and Italy—who came • out of the Great War stronger than they went in, aro not entirely converted to pacificism. The Americans, at any rate, aro piling up armaments, though nobody threatens them or could threaten them. Germany, too, seems at this moment to be menacing. MUST AVOID A WAB. For ourselves, another European war would_ be utterly ruinous, and t6 embark in it woud be an act of criminal follyamounting to insanity. The question is whether our Government has not entered into compacts which might conceivably drag us. into the abyss. lam very much afraid that the French think that we should help them again if they went to war with Germany. I think so from whatl have read in French books and periodicals. My own conviction is that, pact or no pact, the peoplo of this country would refuso to fight for the t French, and I see no reason why v^o should. The Germans, I believe, understand tho state of public opinion in England; but the French do not. This is an extraordinary dangerous state of affairs; nothing could be more likely to cause a catastrophe; and wo might find ourselves in a position from which wb could hardly extricato- ourselves without dishonour. I think, therefore, that wo ought, while there is yet time, to withdraw from any agreement which, in any conceivable circumstances, may compel us to join in a r ruinous conflict which does not concern us at all. There are some, like Mr. Wells, who oppose tho League of Nations, just bocause it is a League of Nations. They wish to abolish frontiers, to scrap patriotism, and to proclaim "tho Parliament of man, the federation of tho world.." I cannot go all tho way with fhem. The sentiment of nationality is very strong, and does not seem to be growing weaker. In the Great War it swept away all. opposition. Those who wish to abolish patriotism too often wish, to substitute for it something far worso —tho vile spirit of class-war. This, of course, is what the Communists want;

wo can understand their hatred for , Fascism and Nazism, which are based on intense loyalty to tho nation as a unit. I am not an admirer of Hitler; but both, in Germany and Italy there is a noble aspiration to make an end ,of all class animosities arid to work together for the common good. "My country first, my class second, myself last." This is not a bad motto for a great nation. Patriotism is far too inspiring an emotion to be thrown away; it needs to bo purified, not destroyed. Those' who quoto, or misquote, from Johnson, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," are the kind of people whom I should be glad to see chased-to their last refuge. Wo all belong to a great many associations, each of which has a strong but limited claim upon us. There is the family, our partners in b'usincss, our Church, our country, and the comity of all civilised humanity. We must not let any one of these swallow up the rest. As St. Peter snys: "Honour all men. Love tho brotherhood. Fear God. Honour tho King." Tho fear of God may perhaps bo held to include nil lesser loyalties; tho others limit without destroying each other. (Concluded.)