The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. GISBORNE, JANUARY 16, 1902. BRITISH EMPIRE.

Gisborne Times, Volume VII, Issue 315, 16 January 1902, Page 2

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. GISBORNE, JANUARY 16, 1902. BRITISH EMPIRE.

A writer in an American paper has been dealing with the subject of “ The British Empire ol the Twentieth Century.” A condensation o£ the article may well be given to show the work of the colonies is being noted in America. There is one quarter in which even the most despondent Englishmen see nothing but hopefulness and light. •The magnificent rally of the colonies to the side of the Mother Country during the stress of the Boer war lias at last brought home to “ the man in the •street ” some sense of what empire means. The more one looks into the state of British policy during the last half-century, the more clearly one perceives that the unconscious drift of the nation is away from Europe and toward the empire. The old Palmerstonian policy of meddling in European affairs, the old Pahnerstonian ideal of being a decisive power in Continental chancelleries, has been outgrown. In what shape the new-born enthusiasm for the empire is to develop will he the master question of British policy during the- twentieth century. The Boer war cannot leave the empire as it found it. It lias opened up a practical path to that imperial federation whfch is the ideal of English statesmen —a path which England is only too anxious to follow up. Three schemes have already been put forward for binding the colonies still closer to the Mother Country—one for a gigantic system pf imperial defence, with every colony contributing its share to the naval and military forces ; another for a Pan-Britanuic senate composed of delegates from the self-governing colonies, sitting at Westminster and thence superintending the affairs of the empire ; and a third for a Customs Union, an imperial zollvcrein, coterminous with and restricted to the empire, and directed against the rest of the world. Of these, the first only is immediately practicable. The zollverein theory is already relegated to what Mr Gladstone called the dim and distant future. England will not give up free trade, and the colonies cannot as yet afford to sacrifice protection. As for the notion of a Pan-Britannic senate, that scheme, too, in spite of Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s hacking, has one fatal flaw. The colonies do .not want it They are devoted in the Crown and the empire, but they are excessively suspicious of Downing street and Westminster. And the basis of their devotion 'is sentiment and freedom. They are loyal mainly because, they are 'English and because England does not interfere with them. In the matter of imperial defence, something had been done before the Boer war broke our. But these were mere incidents compared with the eagerness of all the colonies to pom out their blood and treasure in defence of the empire when the Boer successes seemed for the moment to endanger England's hold on South Africa. This war has armed the empire. It can not he long before all the self-governing colonies have their own armies and their' own fleets, and the world will shortly iiav.c to accept it as an axiom of politics that to attack England is to attack Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India also. This co-op-eration in mutual defence is in line, too, with the central tendency of British 'imperial policy. So far as one can see—and it is now not a question of politics, but of geography—the period of acquisition is over. England wants no more territory, and even if she did there is no more to he had, except an odd slice in Africa and a strip or two in Central Asia. The nineteenth century closed the era of expansion; the twentieth inaugurates that of consolidation. To bold and develop what she has won is the task of Great Britain from now onwards.