CARDINAL MORAN AND IMPERIALISM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12602, 4 March 1903, Page 4

CARDINAL MORAN AND IMPERIALISM.

Cardinal Moran has the unhappy faculty of employing extreme language when endeavouring to express an opinion on questions of public importance. Moreover, lie does not always speak by the book. Quite recently his public utterances 011 account of certain allegations against lii'itish officials iu Samoa, have brought him into conflict with a largo section of public opinion in Australia. And whatever foundation he may have for those charges, his most recent pronouncement appears to be a singularly unfortunate one. Addressing the Hibernian Society in Sydney the other day, lie is reported to have said that Mr Chamberlain had been trying for years to cajole Australian statesmen to auopt his own Imperialistic views, not in the interests of Australia, but iu the interests of the Home Country. With a smirk of evident satisfaction, moreover, the Cardinal told his audience that Mr Chamberlain 1 had failed. But, he continued, " Mr Chamberlain comes with open 'threats to force upon Australia that system of Imperialism which our statesmen have so justly repudiated." Whatever are we to understand from this ? His audience may have been able to follow him, but we must confess that wo fail to grasp his meaning. Australian statesmen, moreover, will hardly appreciate the term "cajole." as applied to them,' for, as far as wo know the temper of the average Australian, he is not of sufficiently plastic material to yield to the gentle pressure of cajolery. Going from bad to worse, Mr Chamberlain, according to the oracular utterances of Cardinal Moran, is now resorting to open threats. But the Cardinal leaves the question in a delightful region of vagueness, inasmuch as he omits to specify the character of tho aforesaid threats. The whole charge is new to us, as, no doubt, it is to the people most intimately interested. That Mr Chamberlain lias encouraged Australian Imperialism, as he has done in the case of all of the British colonics, goes without saying, and that circumstance may perhaps be not wholly acceptable to Cardinal Moran. The onjy grounds upon which the Cardinal might be supposed to base his remarkable attack upon the Secretary for the Colonies is the refusal of the Imperial authorities to recognise Australian proposals for a local navy. Outside the Commonwealth the consensus of British opinion is against colonial fleets, which in time of war would bo a doubtful accession to the strength of the British navy. Tho general opinion is that the British navy must he a properly organised whole under one supreme control, and not a. congeries of widely-dissevered units, under the direction of a multiple authority. Mr 'Chamberlain's influence, without doubt, will be against that phase of Imperialism, displayed by certain Australian statesmen, that aims at tho aggrandisement of the Commonwealth, irrespective of wider Imperial interests. Such projects as an Australian navy foreshadow, dimly perhaps, a hankering desire for independence, and the ultimate setting up of an autonomous State under an Australian flag. The unity of the British Empire is of far greater importance to Mr Chamberlain than -my consideration • of Australian ambition.