“EMPIRE”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23014, 17 October 1936, Page 12

“EMPIRE”

A preference for the term “ Empire,” to describe that world-wide confederation of nations and colonies which own Great Britain as the sovereign State, was expressed by Mr W. M. Birks, of Montreal, in the course of a highly impressive speech at the Chamber of Commerce dinner on Thursday evening. There will be many, particularly of the older generations, who will agree with that choice. To-day the peoples under the British flag are accustomed to being reminded by orators that they are members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. It is a resounding phrase, which has legal sanction in Imperial declarations. The nationhood of the dominions is recognised and their constitution as a body politic is expressed. But Empire—the British Empire—has a more embracing sense. Not all the territories which comprise the Empire are nations, but all have a common cause as units in the greatest democratic confederation in the world, all own a common and willing allegiance to the KingEmperor. Speaking by the book, it is the Empire, rather than the Commonwealth of Nations, to which the British peoples are proud to declare their attachment. The Empire is the State itself; the Commonwealth of Nations denotes the status of the independent nations that are members of the State. That is the legal interpretation. But it is on sentimental grounds that the word “Empire” has its real appeal for Britons. Imperialism may be a suspect term to-day. There is nothing unhealthy in the desire of strong and free-willed units in the British family to proclaim their national status. The lands which form the British Commonwealth were of the Empire before they became nations, and the allegiance of those nations to-day is to the Mother State which founded them. Their first identity, which is fundamental, is as parts of the Imperial Britain which in a century of enterprise spread her influence and her wise statesmanship around the world, and it may be agreed that the word “Empire” best implies the kinship of the British peoples.