IMPERIAL UNITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 1509, 16 January 1914, Page 9

IMPERIAL UNITY.

VISCOUNT BRYCE'S VIEWS. RACIAL ANTAGONISM. PURITY OF PUBLIC LIFE. [FROM OUR OWN" CORRESPONDENT.] London, December 13. The first important statement regarding his observations in the Dominions was given by Mr. John Bryce, ex-British Ambassador at Washington, at a dinner at which the National Liberal Club entertained him last night. Sir Edward Crey, who presided, paid a glowing tribute to the man, who, though one of the. best of party supporters, had been able for so many years to put party absolutely away, and be the impartial ambassador of his country abroad.

Mr. Bryce made a long speech on general topics. "In travelling round the world," he remarked, "one is struck very forcibly and painfully by the prominence recently assumed by questions affecting the relations of different races to one another. R-ace antagonisms have suddenly become a formidable industrial phenomenon. That is especially so within the British Empire. We have given our Imperial citizenship to all our subjects, but, on the other hand, there are the rights we have necessarily ceded to the self-governing Dominions. Each of those Dominions is master in its own bouse, and when the action of a self-governing Dominion comes into opposition'with what are supposed to be the interests and feelings of a branch of one of the other races inhabiting another part of the Empire, and when that race thinks that in the person of some of its members it is injured or wounded a painful dilemma arises. I do not see a satisfactory issue from that dilemma. Seeing how acute the antagonism is, and how great the evils which might result from any friction, would it not be better, if we can. to endeavour to induce each race to stay, so long as the position remains acute, within its own country? Preventing Friction. " 1 have had frequent opportunities in the United States of seeing how the difficulties arose there, and I will say: 'To prevent friction, reduce contact as much as you can.' I am not without hope that in time those feelings will pass away, but when one sees how strong racial feeling can be, in a. certain sense how unreasonable, and how hard to deal with, one feels that the more we can avert occasions for it arising, the better for both parties. " There are two things very encouraging and cheering in the condition of Canada' Australia, and Xew Zealand. One is that the public life of the colonies is pure. Public opinion maintains there the high standard which has been held in this country since the days of Chatham and Pitt, and no man who is seriously tainted can hold his gToand in politics. lii the second place, the judicial bench is absolutely above suspicion, and that is largely due to the fact that British precedents have been faithfully observed. Ilia third thing is that the executive is strong, law and order are well maintained, and there are no disturbances or violence anywhere. Indeed, everywhere one travels one finds that Great, Britain is taken as the type and model of a community which has succeeded in reconciling liberty with order, a community that is not afraid of violence breaking out because everyone has faith in constitutional methods, It will be a loss to the world, as well as a mark of our decline, if the standard set up by our forefathers, if the glory and fame of the British examples of uniting liberty and older shall ever be suffered to depart (Cheers.) ' Strengthening the Bonds. '" You may ask whether I can suggest any way by which the ties holding the Empire together can bo strengthened. I think everyone feels that if anything of the. kind is to be done it must 'not be under any pressnre from one quarter or the other, but must, proceed from the general and spontaneous will both of the peonle at Home and those of the self-governing Dominions. In the meantime- one of the first things we ouch I to do is to see more of one another. We ought to convey more to one another of what is going on, always, excepting party politics, for our friendship must l>e that of nation for nation and not of party for party. I come back with a far stronger sense than I had before of the value of the maintenance of the Imperial connection. Our union with the colonies is a great and wholesome factprimarily for ourselves, but also for the world. I have often thought that if the political connection between this country and tinUnited States had been maintained slavery would have disappeared more quicklv. anil tlie Civil War might have been averted through the influence of the public opinion of the Mother Country. In the same, way should anv crisis arise in the Dominions! the sympathy and mediating power of the Mother Country, operating through public opinion, will have a healing, wholesome, and salutary effect upon the relation of parties, factions, and interests in such a crisis. Let us all do what we can, not merely as a Government, but in our individual capacities, so far as we have the opportunity and the occasion, to preservn the connection of every part of the British Empire with the Mother Country and of all these parts with one another because the maintenance of that connection will ' make not only for our own strength and welfare, hut also for the prosperity, peace, and progress of the world." (Cheers.)