Lake Wakatip Mail. QUEENSTOWN, FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 1900.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2294, 12 January 1900, Page 4

Lake Wakatip Mail. QUEENSTOWN, FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 1900.

The British Empire has now reached a turning point in its stately and marvellous history, and upon the future course which will be mapped out for it by the Cabinet, depends the stability and intregrity of the Empire. It is not for us to know that which lies concealed in the lap of the future, but " coming events cast their shadows before," and by careful study of the Empire as it stands, we may be enabled to prophesy with some degree of certainty, the events of the future. The next century may have much in store we cannotyet realise, but we believe that it will prove a period of international troubles and a fierce struggle for the supremacy of the seas. " There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune," and so it is with nations. As we look back, down the vista of centuries past and dead, we see that nations through failing to perceive the tide of fortune have fallen away into decay and been lost for ever. Witness the fate of Greece, Roumania and Turkey, and, looking ahead, we see Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and Switzerland all great nations in the world's history—now nearing a fall from which they can never rise. Austria, Italy and France are being swept towards the great sea of international trouble, so pregnant with fate, and their chance of surviving is indeed small. The world is watching with the keenest interest the struggle in the Transvaal, and it is quite probable that, but for the magnificent display of Britain's power on land and sea, the other Powers might have intervened and the result would have been a fight for the possession, not of the Transvaal, but of Europe. As it was, the mobilisation of the British fleet and the demonstration of her power upon land convinced Europe that Britain was ready. As a counter demonstration, we learn by last week's cablegrams, Russia is mobilising her forces on the Afghan frontier and already sixty thousand men are gathered there. This is a menace to the safety of India and doubly so, at the time when large contingents from our Empire of the East are engaged in South Africa, but as soon as the news reached the Viceroy of India large bodies of hill-fighters from Northern India were despatched for Afghanistan. Those who know India will know what hill-fighters are; their ranks are composed chiefly of Ghoorkas, those terrible hillmen who can cut a man in two with one sweep of their curved swords and who, once bitter enemies, are now our most valuable allies. They are commanded by the bravest and most experienced English officers, for their regiments are always in the thick of the battle and they are the ones selected to storm the most inaccessible positions. These men will be thoroughly at home in the rocky gullies and mountain fastnesses of wild Afghanistan, and Russia's entrance there, will not be yet. The Transvaal war, at present the one great subject of interest, means much that does not yet appear on the surface, for the result of this war will determine Britains supremacy in Africa and may—in all probability will—determine Britain's future amongst nations. The grand wave of patriotism that has swept throughout the length and breadth of the Empire has not been without its salutory effects on the Foreign Powers for they now see that Britain has vast resources at hand in her Colonies. Then too, they can see that America is with Britain heart and soul, and that, should it come to a struggle for supremacy, the whole of the American nation, whose interests are identical with Britain's, will cast in their lot with the old Mother Country. Thus we see Britain, her Colonies and her sister nation, allied against the world —an Anglo-Saxon Alliance united in heart if not in form.

In the impending struggle for supremacy, the Empire will require to put forth her whole strength, and that she may still reign as the Sea Queen of old, it is imperative that she should be united. The one clear call is for federation of the British Empire under the grand old flag, and in this dwells the only hope for the permanency of the maritime supremacy of Great Britain, for when the Empire "has crossed the bar " there will be no turning back. Think for a moment what our \ast Empire is. It has a territory of 13,000,000 square miles, and a population of over 420,000,000, about onefourth of the population of the whole earth, The existing revenue of the Empire added together amounts to £257,653,000, and the imports and exports to £1,375,000,000. There has been no nation like us, there is none to tame our pride. Sir Hercules Robinson wrote, " We should always bear in mind that our existing political relations with the great self governing colonies are not permanent, but merely provisional, and we should negtect no opportunity to consolidate our colonial dominion, to arrest any tendency which favours disentegration, and to establish an identity of interest and sympathy between the colonists and the inhabitants of the Mother Country." Britain is nearing the time when she will " cross the bar " for good or ill—there will be no turning back— and the one clear call is sounding for Imperial Federation, and, in due time, an alliance of the Anglo-Saxon race. The Empire w} l take the cause of freedom and justice, and her arms will never be laid down until peace universal reigns; that she may find, to crown each deed, success at her command, is the prayer of every British subject. The parting

of the ways is reached when the Empire will become impregnable by consolidation or shattered by want of unity. We are confident that when the Sea Queen wakes from her scornful silence, wakes to her last of fights, she will find her great colonies ready to to the death for the grand old flag, and as long as the nam&of the Great White Queen is revered in the land, Britain will never fall. Her statesmen have recognised the spirit of the age and the urgent necessity for union, and in due time union will be an accomplished fact. The vast Empire, from Canada to India and Australasia, has heard, and responds to, the one clear call for Imperial Federation.