ANGLO-SAXON UNION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5655, 28 August 1896, Page 6 (Supplement)

ANGLO-SAXON UNION.

The inspiring dream of a great, peaceful and beneficent Anglo-Saxon federation still keeps its hold upon the minds of men of intellectual prominence, and who are not mere dreamers of dreams. The visit of the Lord Chief Justice of England to the United States may do much toi bring about the desired federation by helping on the re-union of England and the mighty nation that has grown up in what were once her American colonies. The establishment of a Court of Arbitration for the settlement of disputes between the United States and Great Britain would be a strong link in the chain which will ultimately bind these two great Anglo-Saxon countries more closely together. A significant Fourth of July meeting was held in London this year, when Englishmen joined with Americans

in celebrating the anniversary of American independence and in exchanging sentiments of mutual regard and friendship. This is a more gratifying spectacle than that which was witnessed some ten months ago of hatred and jealousy being stirred between the two countries over the Venezuelan dispute. England has at last, to some extent at least, accepted . the advice of the poet to

Be proud of those strong sons of tliine Who wrenched their rights from thee. Mr W. T. Stead, who presided at the English meeting just mentioned, jocularly remarked that England "wished to annex the whole American Kepublic," in the sense that it desired to be one with the United States in bonds of friendship and goodwill. The United States Ambassador, Mr Bayard, delivered one of his felicitous and telling addresses on the occasion. A discordant note -was, however, struck by Sir Walter Besant, who expressed his belief that all the colonies would ultimately separate from the Mother Country. In fifty years' time, he predicted, there will be five political systems where there is now one ; and instead of the British Empire comprising federated groups of locally independent States, there will be as separate States the British Empire, Canada, Australia, the Cape and New Zealand. "It was, not to be believed," he said, "that the colonies just enumerated were going to continue for any length of time the fiction of dependence uppn this country ; they would go their way, and our best wishes would go with them. That they would go he made no manner of doubt." Sir Walter Besant is doubtless sincere in his belief, and can show tangible grounds for the faith that is in him ; but clearly he chose a most inopportune momentf or declaring it. The Hon W. P. Eeeves, who spoke after the prophet of separation, took occasion to controvert Sir Walter Besant's view of the prospective relations between England and the colonies. "We know," he said, " that you will not drive us away ; but do not, from apathy or carelessness, or from compliance with an assumed imperative destiny, let us slip away from you." "Herein," says the Daily News, "Mr Eeeves struck, surely, the right note — the same note that dominated Sir John Seeley's 'Expansion of England.' Sir Walter Besant, on the other hand,, seems to hark back to the fatalistic and separationist ideas of a former generation — the generation which made a policy, as Seeley puts it, out of a metaphor, and assumed that the colonies would by imperative destiny fall off, like ripe fruit, from the parent stem." We in the colonies are glad to find the leading Liberal paper of London showing such intelligent appreciation of the situation. There can be no doubt that the signs of the times do not point to Anglo-Saxon disintegration, but rather to .a closer union of feeling and interest.