The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 26, 1913. THE ETHICS OF EMPIRE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1812, 26 July 1913, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 26, 1913. THE ETHICS OF EMPIRE.

"The ties which really unite Britain and her Dominions beyond the seas are such ties as those of mutual betterment, pride of race, grandeur of tradition, glory of achievement, loyalty to the Throne, and a resolve to stand shoulder to shoulder when the King calls." These words formed part of the address to King George when His Majesty laid the foundation-stone of tho Commonwealth building in London with appropriate ceremony, an interesting account of which appears- in our cable columns. To people lacking in patriotic feeling and historic imagination, such a description of the ties of Empire may seem to be tinged with exaggeration and unreality, but the idealistic sentiments referred to in the address are doing more than tho anticipation of possible commercial advantages to strengthen the bonds which hold the Britannic peoples together, and to foster the growing sense of kinship and unity which, to quote the words of His Majesty's speech, pervades the self-governing communities of the Empire and those indissoluble ties which knit them to one another and to the Throne. There are some people who seem to think that politics—local or Imperialhave no morals and no ideals; and that they are merely a matter of self-interest. From this point of view the chief end of man is to buy as cheaply and to sell as dearly as possible, tho State being merely a collection of economic individuals. But everyone who has penetrated beneath the surface of the mind of the average man knows that this is not true. His life is made up of a wonderful variety of emotions—love and hate, hope and fear, joy and sadness; and these feelings have their place in his national sentiments, as well as within the sphere of his familv and his social activities.

This idealistic aspect of British Imperialism is well brought out in a striking article on "The Ethics of Empire" in the Juno number of The Bound Table. The writer puts forward no detailed scheme of closer union. He does not deal with the question from that point of view; but lays stress upon the great ethical ideas which underlie the problems of Empire. He takes ■ his keynote from Burke's assertion that "magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom, and a great Empire and little minds go ill together. . . . The principles of

true politics are those of moralitj enlarged." The writer admits that trade and defence must be important factors in any scheme of Britannic unity; but he believes in putting first things first. Ho contends that the economic and defence arguments cannot stand alone. Their place is in subordination to, and in confirmation of, considerations of a broader and more convincing nature. A true conception of a British Empire "must appeal convincingly as an ideal of moral welfare to the ardour and imagination of a democratic people." In spite of the doubts of the opportunist politician whose horizon is bounded by the expediency of the present moment, the writer of the article under consideration declares that a nation will respond to a moral appeal morn readily than to one based on grounds of material advantage, provided that tho appeal is inspired by personal conviction and manifest sincerity. "What is it in Lord Eoberts's advocacy of universal military service that compels the attention and often the assent of the J

man in tho street 1 It is not so much the sense of national peril or the logic of tho argument as the moral personality of the speaker and his call for personal sacrifice in the name of duty, a call which every man, whether he obeys or not, can understand." It is well known that in tho summer schools for working men arranged by tho English Universities the discussions have a marked tendency to gravitate from social and economic topics to the wider issues of ethics and metaphysics. The disinclination of a considerable section of English Radical politicians to "think Imperially" is traced by the writer in The Round Table to the baneful influence of the Utilitarian School who flourished in the earlier half of the nineteenth century, and whoso economic gospel "found expression in the well-worn analogy that as the fruit when ripe drops from the tree, so the colony on emerging from tutelage will become independent of tho Mother Country." Tho progress of events has completely falsified this "Little England" view. The attacks of Carlyle and others have discredited the doctrine that "utility and expediency aro the measure of political duty." Carlyle drew his inspiration from the great German thinkers, Kant and Fichte,' who laid special stress on those very ideas of duty and personality for which the Utilitarians had no place. When applied to politics these ideas come into sharp conflict with the tendency to subordinate principles to opportunism and apparent expediency. An enlightened sense of public duty- has played a great part in the building up of the British Empire, and unless our statesmen continue to be actuated by these ideal conceptions of duty and responsibility it is doubtful whether the Empire can be consolidated on a just and enduring basis. The impressive fact of Empire should help to lift the Britannic democracies above those considerations of political parochialism by which their outlook is in danger of being cramped. "The conduct of great affairs inspires the imagination and elevates the character of those who share in it. . . . The only sure path of national statesmanship is that of a practical idealism which seeks something higher than mere expediency in the fulfilmentof public duty." If this practical idealism finds a normal place in tho political life of the component parts of the Empire, His Majesty may rest assured, to use his own words, that in any national emergency the oversea Dominions will bo ready to play'their part for the common cause, and that their loyalty will not be appealed to in vain.