ENGLISH-SPEAKING UNION

Waikato Times, Volume 123, Issue 20692, 30 December 1938, Page 4

ENGLISH-SPEAKING UNION

Advanced ideas regarding the British Empire, among other things, are held by Mr H. G. Wells. He said, upon his arrival in Australia, that the unity of the English-speaking peoples was “more important than the British Empire to the world and to ourselves.” He added that the Empire was “a temporary political arrangement” and that the reality was that 400,000,000 read, understood and thought English and could make a plan for the world with improved understanding and co-operation. Mr Wells’ opinion is provocative of thought but must be accepted with the reservation that he thinks far in advance of practical politics and doer, not always satisfactorily fill the intervening gap.

In the first place Mr Wells’ vision of an English-speaking federation imposing a plan on the world presupposes an inequality of the races and apparently counts out the effectiveness of the League of Nations. Of course he may mean that the English-speaking union would only offer a desirable plan for the rest of the world to follow. Still, with facts as they are, and with the rising tide of nationalism in Europe, there is much sound reasoning in the exhortation that the English-speaking peoples should combine their strength for the protection of themselves and of democracy. Complete unity of the United States and the British Empire, for instance, would be the greatest stabilising influence in the world, and would make democracy safe from its enemies.

The severance of the two, although their ideals are almost identical, is one of the major anomalies of the age and democracy’s greatest tactical blunder. But the severance for practical purposes is still very real. The mistake is that although in a desperate emergency Britain and America would be found fighting for each other the unity is not sufficiently real in times of peace to turn away the threat of danger. So, in the meantime, and in the absence of an effective League of Nations and of a practical unity of Englishspeaking peoples, Britons must make the welfare of the Empire the first consideration. If the unity Mr Wells envisages can be brought about, so much the better.