WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH IT? A WHITE ELEPHANT AS A CHRISTMAS BOX.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue 7395, 22 February 1902, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH IT? A WHITE ELEPHANT AS A CHRISTMAS BOX.

Fifty-two Governors of the Imperial Institute met in solemn cionclave the other day at York House under the presidency of the Prince of Wales for the purpose of collective suicide. Lord James of Hereford, the chairman of the executive council, delivered the last dying confession iof the ,expiring body, and formally announced that the financial affairs of the suicide would be found in perfect order. The cause for the rash act was not specifically stated, but it is whispered that the verdict of the jury, British public opinion, will be one of felo-de-st-nility. Lord James in his few farewell words announced that the Institute's financial position was most satisfactory, and its property worth half a million. He confessed that the Institute's Commercial Intelligence and Scientific Research Department was doing practically the same work as the Board of Trade. After stating that the original objects of the Institute, especially those connected with the colonies and India, and our other dependencies, would be completely safeguarded, Lord James suggested that the Imperial Institute, with all .its property, should be transferred to the nation. The happy despatch was unanimously consented to, after resolutions had been moved and seconded by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Kelvin, Sir David Tennant, and the Hon. H. Copeland. The Prince of Wales announced that he concurred in the proposals, and that the policy [ of transfer met with the approval of the King.

Whether the gift will meet with the entire approval of the much burdened taxpayer, is another matter. This is essentially an instance where the donee is justified in making the most careful inspection of the mouth of the -gift horse, before accepting an animal which may be sound in wind, but is certainly not sound in limb. The proposed • transfer reminds one of the generous, if unscrupulous, owners of mining shares liable to heavy calls, who. .with an intelligent anticipation of

events before they occur, make -a birthday present of these shares- to some unsuspecting infant- 'The -In* stitute may be nominally worth half a million, but it is certain that the nation will be called upon to put its hand pretty deeply into its pocket if it is to maintain the Institute as a going concern. What will the nation do with it? How can the Institute be made to serve any Imperial purpose? No one seems able to give a satisfactory answer to these questions.

Whatever the representatives of the nation do with the Institute they cannot very well do less to safeguard the original objects of the Institute than its late Governors. The Institute was, I take it, to be an up-to-date commercial museum of the Empire, and a link between the Mother Country and the colonies, to the encouragement and development of their mutual trade. Whatever else it has been, and it has been many things by turn, it has never been an Imperial Institute. In a work of reference published a year or two after its opening I read that "the Institute practically offers, all the advantages of a first-rate club," in addition to its primary object." That sentence explains the way in which those to whom the "running" of the Institute was i.rst entrusted sought to discharge their trust, and the reason why the colonies promptly gave the place the cold shoulder. But as a club the "Imperial" could not compete successfully with the Colonial Institute. As an exhibition and after dinner lounge it could not vie with the Earl's Court displays of Imre Kiralfy. The fairy lamp and band policy proved a dismal failure, and deserved to when the Institute's idea of Imperialism in music Avas to import foreign players. As a museum the Institute Is comparatively unknown and unfrequenf> ed compared with its rivals next door, which attract their thousands on holidays. And when the old fogies of Kensington rub their eyes after their nap in "the first-rate club house," and discover that the colonies are something more than poor relations, to be invited occasionally to family gatherings, and then patronised and to be severely kept at a distance and snubbed in the interim, and that Imperialism is not a mere catchword, but a living force, and seek to convert the Imperial Institute into a commercial intelligence bureau, they find that the Board of Trade has taken the bread out of their mouth, and that "Othello's occupation's gtone." Having come to an arrangement whereby the London University, whose connection with the colonies and India is still

to seek, occupies about half the building, the Governors cut the Gordian kniot of their responsibility by making a Christmas gift to the nation of property which we have always understood was held in trust for the Empire. It is as if trustees, having neglected their trust, and heavily encumbered the trust property, said to the beneficiaries: "Your affairs are in a most satisfactory financial condition, and ytour property is a valuable one. Accept it as a Christmas present' from us." The gift is what the Roman lawyers would call a damnosa hereditas-