British Empire is Worlds One Hope

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23997, 21 June 1941, Page 15

British Empire is Worlds One Hope

THE war lias helped to clarify some issues that the confused emotions and thinking of the inter-war years had hopelessly obscured. On the assumption that the W ;ir to end wars had really ended wars and that the League of Nations had solved for all time the major problem of the small nations—their existence without interference from strong :1,, d predatory neighboursnianv sections of highly vocal people ■jn the Dominions Began to revise the current ideas of the relations of the various parts of the British Empire to the Mother Country. The verv name Empire became anathema to them. In a world to be controlled bv Collective Security, when the strong nations were to use their strength to protect the weak, the small country was to go its own way safe and unmolested. There was no need to worry about defence because at long last the aggressor had been cleansed of his greed and aggression. ' Foolish Voices Mow Silent When Eire, which had at last achieved Dominion status within the British Commonwealth of Nations, decided that this was not nearly enough, and that every, bond linking her with Britain must, be finally broken, she simply carried to its logical conclusion what many in the Dominions were shrilly advocating. It was taken for granted that the Imperial connection was no longer necessary for our continued and prosperous existence. The Empire was outdated, outmoded. In the modern world a small defenceless ''nation could live out its own life in isolation.; could insulate itself from the rest of the world in a self-contained, self-sufficient community. The irony of the whole muddled business was that only the might of the despised British Empire made any such dream in the smallest degree , possible. These last I tragic days have shown that the only small nations that have managed to survive are those within the circle of the British Empire and sheltered by its might. Those clamorous foolish voices are silent now. If those anti-imperialists had

had their way their countries could not. have withstood the first week of the war. Neutrality has ceased to have any intelligible meaning for the small nations of the world. Hitler has seen to that. All their vaunted neutrality has done for them is to make them his accomplices in the greatest crime ever planned against humanity. Menace of Darkness Tlie one hope fo> the world lies in tins so long maligned British Empire. There is nut onlv the one power that is left to and to conquer the terrible menace of a foul darkness that threatens to cover the whole earth, but there, too, is the one hope left for a rational and just reconstruction of tho world when the war is won. Our fathers built better than they knew. When they beat out of their long and complex history, and out of the British character, the noble conception of an Empire of free peoples dedicated to certain ideals of liberty, and a certain wav of life, they handed on to us of this generation the only hope and guarantee of a future in which lite will be worth living. At last we are beginning to see clearly the mission of the British peoples in the long history of mankind. If we

Our Privileges and Duties As Citizens o Unity Essential to Combat Barbarism

BY KOTARE

fail to maintain and hand on that heritage the future of mankind is dark without one ray of light to comfort. In the great hand of God wo stand, and wo shall not fail. Empire and Dominion If the new world must build on the foundation our fathers laid, and our efforts aro preserving, it is plain that we must even in the very struggle for existence, rethink our ideas of the relations within the Empire of all the component parts. We must resolutely shed the theoretic foolishness which, if it had had its way, would have left us and the world defenceless before its enemies. Everything that tends to undermine that unity which has proved the safety of us all must be ruthlessly eliminated. Anything that would weaken our imperial power in the face of a world of bitter enemies must be treated as a treason against humanity. 11 the events of recent years have not proved to us iho necessity of tightening 1 11» the bunds of Empire we have degenerated into a rare of morons lit only tu be the ol a herrcnvolk. In this inter-relation of the various parts ol (lie Empire, and especially in the relation of the [tarts of the .Motherlaud. a first duty will be the determination and definition of citizenship. If the Empire idea is so important, and we must take that as axiomatic, then there must be a clear understanding of what is implied in imperial citizenship as well as in Dominion citizenship, and the relation of the two must be clearly established. Is every citizen of a Dominion, with the privileges of that status as a democratic community understands them, by that very fact also a citizen of the wider federation with duties and obligations no less distinct and emphatic and indubitable? Or can a New Zealander say that ho is

n New Zealander only, and that there is no obligation upon him to accept, any obligations arising out of his wider citizenship as a member of the British Empire? Is any service a New Zealander renders to the Empire an act of grace, or is it his plain duty as a recipient oi the immense privileges the imperial connection confers upon him? Those whoso memories go back to the last war will remember that this issue was raised in no uncertain form in Australia. There arose then what might be termed the Mannixean heresy. It was an overflow into the Dominions of the memories of grievous injustices in the old world. The idea was that an Australian had no duties in relation to the Federation of free peoples of which his country was a part, llis duties began and ended with his own land. He had one citizenship only, that which he held n.s a resident of Australia. / mmense Re so urces If the Empire is to persist as a vital factor in the world that actuality has at last revealed to ns, it must, have so complete a unity that it can act in all times of emergency with the whole power ot its immense resources "I nianliuod and material, witliuut delay, and with a maximum of efficiency. Imperial citizenship must have its clearly marked and accepted responsibilities which are as precise and definite as those of the narrow local citizenship. We must never again have the humiliating spectacle of citizens of New Zealand claiming neutral citizenship when for years they have been exercising all the rights and enjoying all the .privileges of New Zealand citizenship. Now that t ven the bitterest prejudice or the incessant, brooding on ancient wrongs has learned how utterly dependent we are on our imperial connection. it should he made plain once and for all that there can lie no Now Zealand citizenship without a complete acceptance of Imperial citizenship, that the one always implies the other.