VICTORIA, QUEEN AND EMPIRE BUILDER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11282, 9 January 1915, Page 5

VICTORIA, QUEEN AND EMPIRE BUILDER.

(By MARY WATI'S in ;' The New York

Herald.")

Because a little woman was sufficiently wise and true-hearted to become a builder of empire half a century ago German statesmen wore, greatly disconcerted when, at the beginning of the present war, England came torward as an active member of the allied forces. If Queen Victoria had not been also the Empress of India, if she had nob made fast the bond between Australia and British North America and the Mother Country Germany would linn? been indifferent to the stand taken by England in the struggle that is nondisrupting Europe. If there were not Canada and Australia to Heed England, if there uvrepot India and British Columbia to send troop, what would it matter the primes of Emperor William that Great Britain cared to defy them? Queen Victoria .stood with Sir /o.m Macdonnld and Lord Heac.nsnob as tho builder of the greatest ICu-piro that the world has ever known. She was a strictly constitutional monarch, and throughout h r long ur.gn never deviated even by a hai: v - breadth from the line of conduct which lay well within her right. Her influence, therefore, in solidifying the position of the Crown Mini in welding the Empire is all the more remarkable. The Queen's career frotr the beginning to the end or her reign was a triumph of personality. It is the influence of that personality, more than anything »lse, which sent the crack troops of India across two seas and a continent to fight side by side with London clerks and Scottish ploughmen. It is the tradition of "the Great "White Mother" which Beaconstield used so successfully in the Orient and Sir John .Macdonald wielded so powerfully in Canada- that enabled the Empire to survive even when a group of English statesmen had come to the conclusion that it would be much better for Great Britain.if her colonies were to fall away and demand their independence. " Under Victoria England has encompassed the world with nascent commonwealths,'' said William T. Stead. '"' The chronicle of the Queen's reign is an unbroken record of Imperial expansion. 01' all the jewels in her diadem of Empire she has lost only one. Heligoland.'^ When the young Queen came to thethrone monarchy had ceased to :>e greatly admired in England. Tt had come to be associated more or less with despotism, lax morals and Undignified behaviour. In order that Queen Victoria should bo able to exercise any influence whatever, therefore, it was necessary that she should first gain the respect of her lieges and that she should win from them a personal regard which would prove a much needed bulwark for the Crown.

The Queen was eminently fitted by lature to achieve this task moiv.v t>y jiving out her life according to natural Inclination. The respect and love for the Queen personally came to constitute an asset for monarchy that in England provided an indestructible barrier to the democratic and liberal principles which in the comparatively earlv part of her reign flooded Europe and might have found England a very easy conquest if the head of the State had been an object of scorn or of derision.

Thus while the year 1848 shook so many Continental thrones, that of "reat Britain scarcely felt the shock of the Continent-wide upheaval. The Queen was not beautiful, but she had much personal charm, a sweet and self-sacrificing nature and that womanliness which appeals more widely to men of all classes than even more 'brilliant qualities. From her earliest. coming to the throne, she had been in inspiration to her subjects. Men nf the armv and navy, government officials of all classes and the public at large cherished a sentiment of tenderness for the young sovereign, who represented to them all that was sweetest and best in life. Kipling in one of his stories speaks of this feeling, which existed among the officers of the Tndian regiments, in which it was the custom for the officers to break the glasses from which a toast to the I Queen had been drunk, since no one else was worthy to be toasted from the same, glass. William IV.. Qneen Victoria's uncle and her predecessor on the throne, had some vague conception of the relation in which his sweet and charming niece might stand to the people of Great Britain when she came to reign over them. Having invested the. crown in the. minds of the people with the integrity of her own character so that it had coma to be again regarded with reverence, the Queen then came to the. second phase of her building of empire. The statesmen of the day, manv of them at least, had brought the Home. Government into disrepute with the colonies by insisting that these, dependencies and federated States owed allegiance to England as a sovereign. State. The colonials universally rejected this theory of government, and insisted that they owed allegiance to the crown only, nnd not to England as a sovereign State. Modern, nistovians are- of the opinion, that the insistence on the former theory of the bond which united the colonies to the Mother Country would have disrupted the Empire. The Queen and her favourite advisers net about making the crown the symbol of empire. lib was tacitly admitted that the. colonies owed allegiance only to the crown, and since the person of the sovereign was so much beloved the bonds which united the various parts of the Empire soon became strong beyond possibility of severance. "While the Queen played her part in the strengthening of the Empire by standing as its embodied expression. Lord Beaconsfield, her favourite Minister, made imperialism a rallying cry for the nntion through a political party nnd nlso advanced the interests of the Empire in the Orient. Sir John Macdonald held the great North American territories to the crown as his part of the compact. It is interesting to note that British historians have set doivn the conviction that it was the combined power of the Queen and Macdonald at this point that kept Canada from < seceding, with the probability of later joining the United States. Tt was well for the Empiro that the Queen had been able to make for herK*»lf so strong a position in the hearts of. the people, of the. colonies, for between 1860 and 1880 a number of leading British statesmen arrived at the conclusion that it would be wisest to dismember the Empire by pursuing a course* of action that would goad the colonies into demanding their "independence.

The colonies hy this time, hoAvever, had learned to disregard the Ministers and to consider the sovereign as of sole importance. What has since been called tha fallacy of dismemberment was, therefore, entirely ineffective. The name of Queen Victoria wns one to conjure with throughout the world. The men who "Built up tho Empire in Australia, South Africa and British North America worshipped tho Qugohn whom many of them had never even seen, as they might some fair divinity who furnished them with an ideal for which to fight. In India the natives railed Queen Victoria "The Great White Mother," and oven in the most remote portions of the Empire, where the name of the greatest British Minister or the Viceroy avouM have been received without recognition, that of Victoria, was respected and loved. The Queen became the Empress of India in 1876 by the passage of a Bill in-

troduced into Parliament by Disraeli. The Bill was strongly opposed by those* who conceived the title to be merely an empty bauble, designed (solely lor the pleasure of the sovereign. Hut there was a. much bigger reason for tieacquisition of the title. It was intended to impress the Indian princes and people with the. suzerainty of the British crown. It was also a recognition ol' tho sovereign's responsibility towards her great dependency. The effect of the adoption of the title upon the Indian subjects was immediately felt in their greater devotion and in greater unity. That the " Kaisori-hiud " genuinely loved them- and took a personal in-k-rest in their well being they were never left to doubt. The Queen endeared herself to her Indian (subjects by studying the literature of tho East, in which she was instructed by learned Indians. She learned Hindustani when she was seventy years old and hhe kept a diary in the Cnl tongue. She kept nia-n.v Indian servants about, her and at all times continued until the end of her life to show a warm interest- in her dark .subjects. In .June. 1897, on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee, the Queen had tho opportunity of reviewing a procession which represented in magnificent fashion the'lmperial solidarity lor the furtherance of which she bail expended her influence for sixty years. The Ministers of Great Britain seized the opportunity to make the occasion a festival for the British Empire. In the .lubilee procession there wero in addition to the regiments of Englishmen. Irishmen, Scotsmen and Welshmen. Mounted Rifles from Victoria, and New South Wales., from the Cape, from Natal and from Canada : Kansas from the Niger and the Gold Coast, coloured men from the West Indian regiments. Zaptiehs from Cyprus. Chinese from. llo»g Kong, Dyaks from British North Borneo, Imperial Service troops scut by the native princes of India and detachments ol Sikhs, who, next to the brilliant Indian troops, received the most admiring applause front the spectators. The Queen, greatly affected by the magnificent loyalty of the display, sent to her subjects throughout the world the message :-•■- " From, my heart I thank my beloved people: mav God bless them." The Queen died January 22, 1901. having reigned sixty-four years.