THE TRUE IMPERIALIST.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 11997, 4 September 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE TRUE IMPERIALIST.

(By J. M. in London "Daily Chronicle.) Sir George Grey, Governor, High Commissioner and Premier, au Historical Biography, by J aoies Collier. Christchurcli and London, Wliitcombe and Tombs. It isjaajMiing to watch the "discovery >s9|bw his death, of a great man urM™. nis lifetime, has been neglected, liud this process is now well begun in the case of Sir George Grey. Here is the fourth or fifth biography of him we have had, and no doubt we shall have others. Certainly it' is not the last word on the man who was ■the father of British Imperialism in its' truest, and best sense. Spacious! Our author remarks that: '• Greyrwas never parochial, and the strands of 'his variegated career were continually"" being crossed by t breads from the .Motherland or from other provinces of the Empire." Precisely; but tins life of him is eminently.. parochial,, which, maybe, was more or less-'inevitable since the retting is New Zealand after Grey had ran his course as pro-Consul. By some singular chance—or mischance—he, a spacious figure, if ever there was one, was .to spend a good part of his life in a small Colonial community which judged him by its own ways. It was too near' the mountain to see its size. Speaking of him in retirement at his beautiful island of Kawau, our author says, and there is light in the words:. "Few New Zealanders of any importance visited him .there, and he .did not wish to see them. He desired to bo left to himself." We gather that Mr Collier knew Sir 1 George in.New Zealand, which fact often means fresh points of personal information. 'We also gather that Mr Collier was at one- time assistant to I Herbert Spencer. It will be a cbn- | sequence of this that he applies a sort I of synthetic philosophy to an analysis of Grev and his work. We are told that: " "The surface of his mind was spread out before - you, but the depths were, it at first seemed, beyond your plummet's, sounding." The Secret! But Mr - Collier, fortunate man, found the'secret of this personality, the open sesame to an understanding of-it: "He who had long been an-enigma to bis Colonial contemporaries 'and a problem'to his intimates, had given up bis secret. The heart of his rovstery had been plucked out. The riddle of the scornful Sphinx had been read." Very well; v what is made of this great opportunity? Is it not rather wasted' in pin-prickine, sdeh as the following extracts imply? "It was once suggested to Sir George Grev that be should write his autobiography. Pah, he exclaimed. I with a gesture of 'disgust at the , thought of recalling many a passu qe in his past life that he won Id gladly shroud behind a veil of oblivion. I'■■:"He'had made friends - with 'the mammon of righteousness' by christen-' I ing Mount Stephen, in Western Australia, after the permanent UnderSecretary fpr the. Colonies, and Stephen stood" hi* friend "as long as -he .remained- at the Colonial .Office;?' , That is a pretty frequent r»ood o* this book, the candid New Zealand friend's mood. I Handsome.

But ,Mr Collier endeavours to lie philosophically fair, to show us Grey "warts and all," hence, on* the other hand, such judgments as.the foUutring: "By his energy, and bis wisdom, his originalities and his audacities, he rose, head and shoulders, above all other Colonial governors, before him. «ir , l since. He will ever be one of the greatest figures in the . Colonial history of the Empire. "By air that he achieved, and hardly less -by he failed to ac- | complish, he approved himself a fa- . mous maker of Australasia and a he--1 roic builder of the British Empire. "When the good and evil of his life come to: be balanced in the eternal scales, his noble work among the Maoris, and afterwards" among the more degraded races of South Africa, -wul weigh down-all else. It will be hispassport to Walhalla." _ We find the weakness of the synthetic system of biography—certainly as applied: to a. complex personality like Grey—very'well illustrated in the case of the. deflection to India and the Mutiny, of troops which had called at Cape Town,, -where Grey was Governor. on their way to Lord Elgin's expedition in China. Did Grey on his own initiative, defying many official risks, deflect the transports? Says Mr Collier: "It is difficult to believe that a sane mind can have entertained such delusions, or through forty years persisted in such beliefs." No Evidence. And yet, when he sums up the case as to whether Grey or Lord Elgin should be given the credit of the thing, he writes: "Evidence is deficient on the on.? side, and altogethetr lacking on the other. In a matter in which there ought to be thousands of witnesses, many of them still living, we are unable positivetly to say that/the transports complied with the requests of. Grey or obeyed-the orders of Elgin. Grey's contention, which looks like the delusion of a distempered brain, is at least arguable." But even if the China-bound troops refused to take Grey's orders at Cape Town, went on to Singapore, and were then ordered by Lord Elgin to India —would the credit to Grey lie any the less? He had already sent every lighting man he could spare from Soutii Africa to India, not to speak of his own carriage-horses to draw guns. If Sir George Grey had been ::liowed his way, South Africa would have been federated in the sixties. Mr Collier niggles at that scheme a trifle ungenerously, and asks: " Was it the imagination of a statesman or an utopianist? Half a century has gone by and the- things he foresaw are still unrealised."

Well, the .seaToi' federation is just about'to l)o set on South Africa, after a war which could never have happened if Grey's scheme .had been aerepted liv the Downing-strcot or his Jay. The Last Phase. Mr Collier is loosely informed about Sir Oeurge Grey's lite in England during the years before his death. The n.uioiir, winch he mentions, thatQueen Victoria had to do with tne reconciliation of Grey' and his wife, ■ who had long been separated, is without foundation. Grey did not die in Bath—an old blunder this—but in South Kensington, London. He did not, except in form, owe his funeral in St. Paul's Cathedral to the Colonial Office. He owed it firstly to editorial action, by word and deed, on the part of "The Daily Chronicle"; next to the Colonial Agents-GeneriiP who put the request to the Colonial Office, and ( only to the Colonial _ Office in that it" supported and transmitted the rcnuest to the Dean of St. Paul's, x We in England, who should have known better, did all too little to honour the ''great consul" when he came homo to us —to die; for tbu« he came, knowing it. Any l>ook with new, personal impressions* or fresh, independent views of Sir -George Grey be read, and this one is so "qualified. Moreover, Mr Collier has a strong, picturesque style which is readable even when you most disagree with him. It is nob to a dummy figure, that he presents us/ but to a living, throbbing man, Sir Ceeirge Grey ,as he saw him in the frame of New Zealand and its small affairs. Perhaps there were several Sir George Greys, and they will all l»c history. ■...•■ .