BRITAIN AND THE EMPIRE

Southland Times, Issue 23740, 11 February 1939, Page 14

BRITAIN AND THE EMPIRE

Charge Of Neglect

HECTOR BOLITHO’S NEW BOOK

That Britain has neglected her Empire is the charge made by Hector Bolitho, 'the New Zealand author, in an introduction to his new book, “The Emigrants: Early Travellers to the Antipodes,” which was to have been published in London at the end of January by Selwyn and Blount. The book was written in collaboration with John Mulgan. In 50 B.C. Sallust said: “Poor Britons —there is some good in them after all—they produce an oyster” (writes Mr Bolitho). The patronizing comment of the Roman has its echo in the twentieth century for, in polite whispers, the Little Englander says: "Poor New Zealanders—there is some good in them after all—they produce lamb and butter.” In brief, it is fantastic that Britain should be the parent of the greatest Empire of all time, for the British are one of the least Empireminded people in the world. “I hate abroad,” somebody said. Another Briton once vowed that “the niggers begin at Calais.” British people en masse are not willingly interested in the Empire. The Australian and the New Zealander do not feel warmly at home when they come across the seas to touch the beloved Sussex earth from which their grandparents came. They creep shyly into boarding-houses near to Russell Square and then they face the maelstrom of London traffic, to gaze in wonder at St. Paul’s, to blink before the Crown jewels in the Tower of London or to dream over the magic tradition as they walk beneath the dark arches of Windsor. The New Zealander or the Australian remains a stranger. His feet seem too big as he essays a journey across the carpet of a noble London drawing-room: he feels that England’s reception of him is cool with duty . . . could one say that he is being entertained in the third person? British people seem to care for the Czechs more than for their own flesh and | blood, which has been refreshed through being nurtured on the plains of Canterbury or among the apple' orchards of Tasmania. The gap between the parent and the emigrant son is still wide. NEGLECT OF THE EMPIRE When the story comes to be written —of how Britian wept for the Armenians and emptied her pockets for the Czechs—somebody will blame tbe parent in strong words for her neglect of the Empire. And as time passes, bringing increased kindness to mass judgment, the names of the Duke of Windsor and Lord Beaverbrook will glow for their insistence and their loyalty to the needs of the young countries. If, in the end, through not deserving her Empire she should lose it, Britain will realize how wrong she was in neglecting her opportunity and forsaking her heritage in spending so much thought and money upon the old frontier jealousies of Europe (those ancient sores which may never heal), when she should have grappled the people of the Empire to her heart—not with commercial agreements of patronizing hospitality, but with those bonds which are the bonds of the soul. 7

New Zealand is celebrating its centenary in 1939. We are reminded that 100 years have passed since the first early windjammers dared to cross the ■world; since the first emigrants dared to uproot themselves from the safe and comiortable earth of England to live in rickety shanties and to risk their lives against the spears of the bewildered, brave Maori people; to dig and endure and suffer, because they had been caught up in the same dream that Columbus spun as fie sat on a wharf in Genoa and dared to believe that the world was round. The wings of their courage were tremendous. In this year of celebration it might not be amiss to remind British people that more than butter and frozen lamb have come out of New Zealand; that the Empire Marketing Board is not the only agency through which the people of the new countries bring their harvest home; that in science, literature and music fine energy and great talent have combined to give the parent food for the spirit as well as nutritious food for her table. In this important year of recollections, when New Zealand makes an especial claim upon the hearts of British people, we may look back and contemplate two interesting themes, the quality of courage which British people took to the Antipodes 100 years ago, and the quality, of mind and imagination which they have brought back into British life in this, the twentieth century.