A BRITON’S FAITH.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 12 September 1925, Page 13

A BRITON’S FAITH.

CREDO. Key to my position. I am a , Nationalist and not a cosmopolitan. _ This seems to be becoming more and more the real dividing- line of parties. A Nationalist, is not a man who necessarily thinks his nation better than others, or is..unwilling to learn from others. He does think that his duty is to his own nation, and its development, lie believes that this is the law of human progress, that the competition between nations, each seeking its maximum development, is the Divine Order of the world, the law of Life and Progress. I am a British (indeed primarily an English) Nationalist. If I am also an Imperialist, it is because the destiny of the English race, owing to its insular position and long supremacy at sea, has been to strike fresh roots in distant parts of the world. My patriotism knows no geographical but only racial limits. I am an Imperialist and not a Little Englander, because I am a British Race Patriot. It seems unnatural to me —I think it is impossible from my point of view—to lose interest in and attachment to my fellow-countrymen because they settle across the sea. It is not the soil of England, dear as it is to me, which is essential to arouse my patriotism, but the speech, the tradition, the spiritual heritage, the principles, the aspirations of the British race. They do not cease to be mine because they are translated. My horizon must -widen, that is all.

I feel myself a citizen of the Empire. I feel that Canada is my country, Australia my country, New Zealand my country, South Africa my country, just as much as Surrey or Yorkshire. We are told that there is no such thing as citizenship of the Empire. In the purely juridical sense that may he true. Juridical definitions spring out of and no doubt strengthen and to some extent stereotype existing human relationships. They do not create them. The tendency to monogamy led to the institution of marriage. When men’s political relationships were hounded by a province, citizenship was limited to a . town. In time it was widened. There is such a thing as citizenship of a country. It is only a question of time when the expansion of the race will compel a new juridical conception, that of a common citizenship of all the countries -which that race inhabits or controls.

LATE LORD MILNER’S CREED. CITIZEN OF THE EMPIRE. «MY HORIZON MOST WIDEN.” The following statement of the late Milner s position in politics was found among his papers after his death It was one of a series of . notes which he had intended to embody in a volume of memories and opinions, and is now published in The Times, by Lady Milner’s permission, exactly as it was written.

The wider patriotism is no mere exalted sentiment. It is a practical necessity even from the point of view of “Little England” —England, nay more, Great Britain, nay more, the United Kingdom is no longer the power in the world which it: once was, or, in isolation, capable of remaining a power at all. It is no longer even self-supporting. But the British Dominions as a whole are not only self-sup-porting. They are more neai'ly self-sufifioi o ut than any other political entity in. the world, that is, if they can be kept an entity, if their present loose and fragile organisations can be made tenacious though elastic. This brings us to our first great principle—follow the race. The British State must folloav the race, must comprehend it, wherever it settles in appreciable numbers as an independent community. If the swarms constantly being thrown off by the parent hive are lost, to the State, the State is irreparably weakened. We cannot afford to part with so much of our best blood. AVe have already parted with much of it, to form the nucleus of another wholly separate 'though fortunately friendly State. AVe cannot suffer a repetition of the process. The time cannot be far distant when this practical aspect of Imperial unity will become apparent to everybody. The work of British Imperialists during my lifetime has been to hold the fort, to keep alive the sentiments which made against disruption, which delayed it, against the time when its insanity became generally apparent. Their business has been and still is to get over the dangerous interval during which Imperialism, which for long appealed only to the far-seeing few, should become the accepted faith of the whole nation. Time was, in my young days, when the gradual dissolution of the Empire was regarded as an inevitable, almost a desirable eventuality. This view is no longer anything like so general, anything like so potent ,as it was. In another 20 years it is reasonable to hope that it may be altogether extinct —that all Britons, alike in the Motherland or overseas, will be Imperialists, that it will be the happier fate of those-who come after us to create that State which it has been our duty to preserve for them the possibility of creating. What makes this result possible, what makes it, thank God, I believe inevitable, is the shrinkage of the world.