THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JANUARY 5, 1914. THE EMPIRE'S GREATNESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15499, 5 January 1914, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JANUARY 5, 1914. THE EMPIRE'S GREATNESS.

In protesting against the pessimism which delights to " babble of England's decadence," the London j Times rejoices " in the conviction i that England and the Empire were | never greater than they are today." In this conviction most colonials will heartily agree, though possibly for different reasons. It is not necessary to be indifferent to Marconi scandals, to Ulster movements, to industrial unrest, and to Juittle Englandisms, in order to believe that the soul of Greater Britain must triumph in the future as it has in the past. To the overseas British this firm belief is bom of the consciousness that in their new lands the national strength is being reborn and rejuvenated and that every passing year strengthens the family compact by which Britain and her daughter-states are pledged to defend each other againrt the world. To those who only know England, the overseas Dominions are vague and unreal, mysterious lands from which come butter in small boxes, lamb in shoulders, and wool seen in woven yarns. They never realise that what is happening below the rim of their encircling sea is that British kingdoms are being made, British shires created, British peoples brought into existence. They do not trouble to think that already we overseas British are as numerous as, and far richer than, the home-dwelling British who broke Napoleon in that titanic struggle of twenty years; that Australia can already muster as many men as the England that broke Imperial Spain and opened the searoads to our settlers; that Canada is a great state, which would be wooed as an ally by every Power if its policy were not governed by its affectionate loyalty; and that even New Zealand is another Britain and the home of men and women whom danger stirs not to yield but to fight. We colonials could not be pessimists, with our broad 1-xr ds and our untold treasures, our rising cities and our teeming commerce, and our fixed determination to make Life better and happier for every honest and industrious citizen, unless we feared that some aggressor could seize and take these colonial territories which are ours. No British colonist actually fears ■'his. Every British colonist in the Pacific knows that unless we increase our garrison-populations, muster our forces and prepare our ships, Asia will some day over-run us and sweep our settlements awav; but in his heart every colonist believes that the garrisons will come, and he sees that universal training has been adopted and that warship? are being steadily gathered to lie between him and harm. We have therefore a very living faith in the permanence of our occupation of our countries, and never seriously contemi.'ate any future in which the Empire does not embrace us and in which the Mother Country is not gladly accorded the leadership of our family combination. We are confident that all our domestic problems can be happily and equitably settled, and that steady progress will be the salient characteristic of our Imperial future.

We should be quite hopeless of the future, however, not merely for the overseas Dominions, but for Britain and the Empire, if British colonists held the remarkably anti-national views upon alien immigration freely expressed by British statesmen, preachers, and publicists who ought to know better. There is not a "coloured" province of the Empire, from great Bengal to little Fiji, where Imperial law would stand for five seconds if it depended solely upon the loyalty and allegiance of the " coloured" population. Whether the Archbishop of Canterbury —professing to be horrified at our colonial determine ion to remain British and not :■ -.one Bengalee— recognises it or no oie moment it passes be; end the "dominions," Imperial authority rules by the sword and by the sword alone. New Zealand can build and nan as many battles}tips it pleases; Australia can set. /t Dew Armada afloat Canada at.d the Cape can do &' they like in the way of " local navies" or Imperial contributions. Decs anybody dream that Britain would permit Egyptians, Bengalees, Malays, Chinese, and the rest of the horde to possess &rd control fleets and navies wirhouv **v ap. after guard?" And is anybody loolibh enough to cxpci that r-hen the Empire figi U for its. lift i3J hut Britain and hoi will do figuring I The Empire. dep°nt'>d for its building upon British men •,:id depends for i+3 existence upon British mc to-day. The Empire is weakened aad handicapped, in the u):;uatb test, by every alien territory it occupies and dominates; while it is strengthened ana buttressed, for war as for peace, b** every new province that becomes the guarded home of British people and the breeding-ground of British men. It is calculated to make the overseas British doubt the national earnestness of their kinsfolk at H me when they see so .little sympathy given to

the colonial passion for racial integrity. If our exclusion policies were overturned and free entry given to Indians or any other Asiatics into our British settlements, in a single generation our national existence would be destroyed and the Empire would be only a remembrance. Whatever other weaknesses the Empire may suffer from, it can hardly suffer from destruction of its colonies by legalised and permitted Asiatic invasion, for the simple and sufficient reason that upon the question at issue every British dominion is agreed and unalterable.