THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 1909. THE EMPIRE AND EUROPE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14093, 22 June 1909, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 1909. THE EMPIRE AND EUROPE.

While the Imperal Press Conference is meeting in London, the Tsar is commencing a. diplomatic mission, of which the meeting with the Kaiser is the first item, to be followed by a visit to Franco and a visit to England. We have here a vivid objectlesson in the difference between Imperial relationships, which arc based upon an ineradicable sense of common and mutual interests, and international relationships, which arc governed wholly by a desire to win personal and national advantage at the expense of other Powers. Lord Rosebery, in his most eloquent address at the opening of the Press Conference, declared that Europe was relapsing into barbarism, and we can plainly see that the peace and goodwill existing between the various States of the British Empire, or even between the two great political organisations of the Eng-lish-speaking peoples, are altogether different from "the traditional friendship and mutual trust" of which the Russian and German Emperors have assured one another. That the ' British Empire makes for peace and that its methods are generally sound and equitable arc demonstrated in a very dramatic manner by the overwhelming majority given by Natal for a South African federation, in which Briton and Boer will forget their recent quarrel, and by the generous proposal of Louis Botha, ablest of Boer generals, that his old antagonist, Dr. Jameson, shall be the first Premier of United South Africa. The French of Quebec and the British of Ontario have long merged their rivalries in the Canadian Dominion ; Australia and New Zealand, though under separate local Governments, are united by the most profound sympathy for each other, and arc equally loyal to the Imperial organisation, which makes their local autonomy possible ; .whichever way we turn among the self-governing States of the -Empire, we arc cheered by the truly civilised character of the relationship which exists among them .and between them and towards the great Motherland from which the great bulk of their population has been drawn and from which all their liberties. have been derived. In Europe the reverse is seen. France and Germany, Germany; and Russia, Russia and Austria, all watch one another over a hedge of bayonets and. a rampart of fortresses, while the United Kingdom— in its attitude towards the European Powers —is necessarily forced to follow the same barbaric procedure. After all the efforts of the Asquith Government to persuade the British public that the naval agitation is largely of party manufacture, there was not a prominent British statesman who ventured to belittle the gravity of the situation to. the Press Conference, and the First Lord of the Admiralty has now stated publicly that "the hope of limiting naval programmes by arrangement has proved groundless," and that Germany is forging steadily ahead with her Dreadnought building. We have Peace and Goodwill within the Empire, War and Hatred "-outside the Empire. If we are wise we shall hesitate at no sacrifice to keen Peace within our Imperial borders and War far away.

When Imperial statesmen, who represent the » various self-governing dominions of the Crown, and Imperial press delegates, who represent the great organs of British and Colonial public opinion, meet together in their respective conferences, they seek, without equivocation, the advantage and the safety of all the British folk. They are able to do so because they accept as fundamental principles certain great political conceptions, and because they arc leagued together, under the Crown, to defend these principles for one another. When Emperors meet, when the Tsar makes speeches to the Kaiser,- when the Kaiser entertains our British King, when the Tsar is a feted guest in Paris or welcomed at Windsor, there is no such bond. It would be preposterous for any freeborn British citizen,' to whom freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of worship, and freedom of Parliament are inalienable inheritances, to profess any sentimental affection for the Tsar of All the Russias. But it suits the diplomatic exigencies of the times to be upon good terms with an Autocrat whose methods.demonstrate effectively how barbaric the Outer World still is. Nobody would really wish to see one inch of German territory go to Russia, for with all our rivalries and antagonisms the German is still our good cousin, and only uncongenial to us when he threatens our peace and our security ; yet British diplomacy, when it touches the barbarous welter in which the European Powers plot and plan, must remember that the Russian pressure upon the eastern frontier of Germany encourages French pressure upon the western frontier of Germany, and thus-pre-vents the Kaiser from concentrating all his energies upon the destruction

of that British naval supremacy which is the present guarantee of our Imperial safety. To modify that pressure, to conciliate the Tsar, to persuade the Government of St. Petersburg that Germany and Russia should combine together and not oppose one another, is the steady purpose of the Kaiser and his Ministers, however that steady purpose may be occasionally obscured by the imperative necessity for maintaining and strengthening the alliance with Austria. France, on the other hand, will endeavour to confirm the Tsar in the policy of keeping Germany in hand by means of the Dual Alliance between the Governments of Paris and St. Petersburg—and thus through the tortuous maze of an international diplomacy which is as unscrupulous, as brutal, and as barbaric as that taught centuries ago by Machiavelli to his Italian Prince. Again, we turn from this unattractive spectacle, in which there is neither. truth nor honour nor any motive beyond self-interest and self-aggrandise-ment, to the inspiring sight of British States, separated by wide oceans, containing not one European people only, but a variety of European peoples, peacefully working out their political, commercial, social, and racial destiny. Not one gun, is turned by British State against. British State, not a rifle is borne by British citizen to fight British citizen, not a' Government among us but exists by the democratic authority of free voters,, and not a quarrel arises that is not submitted unhesitatingly to Courts of Law. We have varying . customs, varying statutes, varying fiscal policies,varying constitutions, but we are as one in our reliance upon local selfgovernment and in our faith in the Imperial bond. We may fairly claim, among ourselves, to be not barbaric but civilised. When the History of Mankind is written by future sages, beyond all doubt they will point to our Imperial Conferences, whereby representatives from the ends of the earth met in good faith not to' cajole and to deceive one another but to consider the common good, the common advancement, and the common safety, as the first dawn of Civilised Order.