EMPIRE BUILDING

Otago Witness, Issue 3298, 30 May 1917, Page 25

EMPIRE BUILDING

THE OLD AND THE NEW. SPEECH BY MR MASSEY. (From Ocr Own Correspondent.) LONDON, February 13. A very interesting Rhodes lecture was delivered this evening at University College, London, by Dr A. P. Newton on "The Old Empire and the New." He took as his dividing line the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. when England lost the greater part of her colonial empire in America. The Hon. W. F. Massey, who presided, said it had been a particularly interesting evening to him, coining, as ho did, from the other side of the world. He agreed with all the opinions expressed. Ho thought for instance that some of the most serious mistakes in British history were the incidents which led up to the loss of the American colonies. Even those incident.-;, however, had turned out not altogether a not unmixed evil, because he believed that what happened then had led to similar evils not being repeated by the statesmen who had had the responsibility of managing the Empire since that date. He had wondered where the lecturer was going to draw the line, and ho could find no fault with the date chosen. It seemed to him the Empire, as we understood it, would, when the war_ came to an end, be a very different Empire from what it was previously. As a matter of fact, we had all become, as citizens of the Empire, careless and indifferent to many things which mattered. We wore thinking about the making of money and the massing of capital, and in important respects wo had forgotten our duty as citizens. We had forgotten that the Empire itself was a sacred trust, ,a most important heritage handed down to us, which it was our duty to pass on to our successors, _ stronger and more united and with its civilisation more highly developed than cver_ it was before. We were now in a transition stage. The war had brought homo to us where our opportunities lay. He believed we had as great opportunities of Empire-building to-day as ever Britain possessed in all her history. At one time Canada was little thought of, but no man living to-day would dare to assort what the population of Canada would 1)0 when this century came to an end. So wit!: South Africa, Australia, mid New Zealand. The opening of the Panama Canal, 100. had given to the islands of the Pacific a future swh as few men could have dreamed of a decade or two ago. The lecturer had said that we had never taken uv Empire-building by design. Quite risrht. But it was time we did so. Ho did nor mean that they should compel residents in one part of the Empire to go elsewhere, but migration was always taking place, and we should do our level best to keep those people under the Flag, to keep them within fhe Empire itself. That, he believed, would be a phase of Empire-building which would not bo lost sight of in future. Mr Massey added a few remarks on the coming Imperial War Conference, and thanked Dr Newton warmly for hi= lecture.