MEANING OF THE FLAG.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11825, 30 November 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

MEANING OF THE FLAG.

[by 'rontr.vGA.]

The children of Auckland Province, at any —and be sure the dour Scots of opposing Otago will not be behind us in this— are to be taught from their lisping days that to keep the flag flying is among the main reasons for their being. They are to be taught to set it above the reputation of the local football team and even above the glory and renown of Advance. They are to learn that twice two make four, and that if a man tries to pull down the flag, shoot him. on the spot. Which arouses the ill-feeling of those who hate to hear the Hap of the bunting, since they conceive that the flag means a state of affairs of which they disapprove. On this, an Auckland schoolteacher and the Auckland Board of Education have joined issue. But the children of this Province are to be taught to salute the flag, nevertheless, and if any teacher has a little rival system of his own he must practise it outside of our provincial schools. That is the Board's verdict, and the public verdict is evidently one of stolid continuation.

Wherefore, it may be wise of us to inquire what the flag means. To what sentiment, to what emotions, do we appeal when we so unitedly agree to train our children to look upon the British flag as a sacred symbol and demand that their teachers shall ceaselessly inspire them to he ready, eager, and willing to die in its defence? The answer is easy. That flag which flies from the school masts means our new-born nationality it means the realisation of the eternal truth that Man is greater than Geography, the reading aright of the riddle of Babel. And the reading of the riddle of Babel is that division of language will tear down the strongest Empire, that no tower of civilisation cat: be built to reach into the heaven of peace and security unless it be founded on a homogenous people, and occupied by men who understand each other. That flag has come to mean the British race and the English tongue; it has gradually come to symbolise all our national hopes and all our national ideals; it means to-day that wherever two or three of British birth are gathered together that flag symbolises their unity with their fellows, that to the one man standing alone it is still the pledge of the nation's loyalty to him. For all loyalties ate reciprocal. And the tad who learns that he should be proud to die to uphold the nationality which the flag symbolises knows that he and his are safe and secure because 01 the readiness with which a world-wide nation would march to death for him and his.

Our dissentient schoolteacher very correctly says that this saluting of the flag is new, that men did not use to do this thing, ' and that eminent men in the Old Country oppose the sentiment it embodies. This is most true. Our nation nearly died in childbirth through the folly of its nurses. Our infant Empire nearly perished from upon the earth because its giddy Mothci,' old enough to know better, coquetted with every smooth-tongued foreigner who flattered her, and left her House to neglect and confusion. Our British nationality of to-day, living and throbbing in five continents, drawing closer and clever to the twin-nationality of America, exists raid triumphs iu spite of the British Governments of the past, is a stupendous proof of how little the individual can do to alter the direction given to his race and people by all-prevailing Fate. That flag which floats to-day over our Auckland schools does not tell of foreign dominion or Imperial control, but of an inherent nationality which rose triumphant over foreign influences and Imperial follies. These Manchester doctrinaires never wanted us at all. They always hated sentimental attachments which involved risks and responsibilities as much as they loved sentimental amusements which left them altogether free. They did not want either New Zealand or South Africa, for their race. They did not care whether Australia was noi/v with Chinese gongs' or clattering with They were the children of those long years of exhaustion that followed Waterloo, the " culls'' that were left in Little England when the strong, the daring, the hot-blooded and the hardy swarmed east and west and south to wherever the world was wide. They stayed at Home to prate of vain imaginings and to tell their oversea brethren not to make trouble, and not to worry then, and not to interfere with the ledger-balance. .Until a generation arose that was bom of rested men. and in which the red English blood stirred again at the tales of adventurous uncles and the greeting of sun-browned cousins. And they began to know that blood is thicker than water, and that while they had toasted their toes by the sea-coal fires the world bad ben studded with Britains, and made safe for &11 British men. Then and not - till then the Home Government lifted the old flag with a- new significance. They gave it the meaning; for which the exiles had suffered and toiled, for which colonials had murmured and rebelled, for which rough and selfish adventurers had given life and fortune with joyful hearts. It became the symbol of unity and loyalty, showing that the British stood to the British all the world round. It betokened at last .that we were indeed a nation, that wherever the flag floated the man of Devon and of York, of Carrick and of Aberdeen, were in their own land, that the Canadian and the Australian and the men of Natal and of New Zealand were sworn to defend each other, and tc set above all local self-seeking the common freedom and the common race and the common nationality. This and naught else is the meaning of the flag, surely a meaning which we should instil with their mothers' milk into our babies' thoughts, so that in the days of stress and storm which come to all peoples, they may pour their blood like water to keep our worldwide Britain sate and free. This is militarism, of course. But are we to be annihilated before we will learn that if those who take the sword perish by the sword the children of the strong swordsmen alone win to the future. Only as a great militant people can we hope to be safe in this fierce and fighting world, and the first requirement of true militancy is that we should know where and for what we will fight, and that great masses should be organised to feel, to move and to act as one man. That fluttering piece or bunting, "only a flag," keeps constantly in our thoughts whew and tor what we will fight. The devotion that surrounds the flag is to be adjudged good or bad according as itmakes for good or makes for evil. And this British national sentiment of ours is absolutely good, since, without it, our race would dissolve into a variety of petty and divided nationalities, doomed to be overwhelmed in detail by more united and more harmonious peoples. The enthusiasm for the Hag is said to be American and not British. This is only partly true, but even if it were altogether true, is that an objection? Our American brethren cut themselves from the main stem of Anglo-Saxondoin. They lost the leadership of the monarch, the continuity of our ancient institutions, the common history which is ihe cement of ' nationality. Thev expanded until the California!! saw the "Pacific, while the New Englander still looked out upon the Atlantic, they drew to them great swarms from other nations, and were brought face to face with the disturbing elements that arise in the nationalising of great continents. They had a common Government, but in their Anglo-Saxon passion for local self-government they had divided governments also. Binding them together was the common tongue ; appealing to their hearts was the symbol of the common flag. When that flag was: fired on at Fort Gunter the slumbering nationality of the giant North awoke. The United States were saved, and kept together, not by the long-rooted patriotism of New England, nor by the divided counsels of New York, but bv the desperate valour with which the Now West flung itself into the contest, that wide and open West, in which millions of hardy pioneers had learned to know the meaning of a flag. What the Stars and Stripes means to our Anglo-Saxon kinsmen in America, the Union Jack means to the British nation of to-day— and more. For if to them it means the unity of a continent, the peace of forty contiguous States, to us it nieansjhe bridging of the oceans, the safety of a score of scattered settlements, the peaceful occupation of the lurthermost isles of the sea. Beneath it we may solve as wo will pur social.

and political problems, within the frontier it marks out we may differ to the uttermost as to ways and means of progression, but it pledges to us that no foreign foe shall interfere with us, that we " think' foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of our realms." The Elizabethan spirit has saturated at last the broader England of the Twentieth Century, No longer are the oversea English, as stepchildren, grudged the sympathy that poured out from England to every foreigner. We sit at the table of the wide possessions that are covered and secured by our Union flag.^ Does it mean nothing that our New Zealand lads should learn to what they owe it that our little handful of settlers occupies in peace and freedom the most fruitful islands of this alien ocean? Haul down that Union Jack, with all it means, with all the added meaning of the Stars and Stripe*, and how long should we hold unmolested the riches of the Long White Cloud? Forty millions of Japanese, four hundred millions of Chinese, a hundred million Russians, and as many Malays and Indo-Chinese, border the ocean on which we fondly hope to build a sea-dominion. How did the Boer treat Englishmen, and whatr mercy -tfid he show when he crossed the frontier to force the corrupt rule of Pretoria upon free-bom British citizen;? And the Boer is a gentleman as compared to the Russian, and an angel of light as compared to the blandfaced Chinaman and the volatile little Jap. Imagine us with a Boxer invasion on our hands, and none but ourselves to resist, it! Imagine the Japs attacking Auckland .'is they attacked Port Arthur, and then sit down and figure out whether it is worth our while to do our part in teaching the schoolboys of the Empire to give their lives, if need be, in order to uphold and to maintain the sanctity of the Hag.