THE TRUE CEMENT.

Grey River Argus, 24 April 1911, Page 2

THE TRUE CEMENT.

AN JEMPIRE OP LIVING THOUGHT. THE IMPERIALISM OF H. G WELLS. (Lyttelton Times Correspondent). LONDON, March 10. The literary genius of Mr H. G. Wells ,and his gift of sketching- bis: constructive, ideals, lend added^ interest to an article of his called "Cement of Empire" in the (first issue of London's latest periodical, "Everybody's Weekly." ' ' What is the real cement of Empire? Mr "Wells cannot bring himself to believe that it is a system of preferential trade, or yet a system of Imperial defence. <( I am no impassioned freetrader/ he says. "The sacred principle of freetrade has always impressed me as a piece of party daptrap; but\l nave never been able to understand how an attempt to draw together dominions so scattered and various as ours by a network of fiscal manipulation could end in anything •but mutual inconvenience, mutual irritation and disruption^" Canada's main routes and trades arid relations lie naturally north and south. ' To narrow its trade to one artificial- duct to England,_says Mr Wells, "will- be like nourishing" the growitig body of a 'man with the heart and arteries. of- a mouse. Then here again,"- h"e continues, ■ "are New Zealand and Australia, facing South America and the teeming countries of Eastern Asia. Surely it is in relation to these vast' proximities that theirs economical,. future lies. Is it possible to .believe that shipping mutton to London is anything but the mere (beginning ■■ of their commercial development?" .. • :. • NO COMMON ENEMY. So, too, with defence.. . The farflung British Empire, argues Mr Wells, has no natural common enemy to weld it together from. without The British are intensely jealous, of. Germany; . but Canada, has .no. natural quarrel with Germany, nor has India, nor South Africa, nor Australia. All •■-■ States HiaVitf btfier special preoccupations. "New Zealand, for example," says Mr Wells, "having spent half a century and more in sheep-farming, land legislation, suppressing its drink traffic, lowering its birth-rate, and, in short, the achievement of an ideal preventative materialism, is chiefly consumed by hate and fear of Japan which in the same interval has made a stride from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, ancf which teems with art and life and enterprise and offspring. Now Japan in welt-politik is our ally. You see, the British- Empire hai no common interests and no natural common enemy." UNITY OF PURPOSE. But — and here we reach the central idea of Mr Well's Imperialism — the Empire has a common medium of expression, a unity of liberal and tolerant purpose amidst its enormous variety of localised life and colour.. He says, "It is in the development and strengthening, the enrichment, the ren dering more conscious and more purposeful, of that broad creative spirit of the British that the true cement and continuance of our Empire is- to be found. The Empire must live by the forces that .begat it." What is wantpd, according to Mr Wells, is the cement of thought and spirit. The Empire must become the universal educator, news-agent, bookdistributor, civiliser-general and vehicle of imaginative inspiration for its peoples. "The effort and arrangement needed to make books; facilities for research and all forms of art accessible throughout' the Empire would be aitogethei trivia! in proportion to the consolidation it would effect." But Mr Wells waxes, very contemptuous about his fellow-countrymen. They do not understand these things, he .say. Their Empire was made for them by their exceptional and outcast men; it has "happened to them as fresh lettuces come to tame rabbits." They do not understand how they got it ,and he fears they will not understand how to keep it. "They are provincials mocked by a worldwide opportunity, the stupid legatees of a great generation of exiles." AN IMPERIAL OPPORTUNITY. "Mostly," he concludes, "they call • themselves Imperialists, which is just 'their harmless way of expressing their satisfaction with things as they are. In practice their Tmperialisrn resolves itself into a cigorous resistance to taxation and an ill-concealed hostility to education. It matters nothing to them that the whole next generation of Vanadians has drawn its ideas mainly from American .publications, that India and . Egypt, in despite of sounder. mental nourishment, have developed their own vernacular Press, that Australia • and New Zealand even now gravitate to America for books and thought It matters nothing to them that the pove.rty and insularity of our intellectual life has turned American art to France and Italy, and the American universities towards Ger man}'. The slow starvation and decline of our philosophy and science, the decadence of British invention and enterprise, troubles them not at all, because th>y fail to connect it with the tangible facts of Empire. 'The world cannot wait for the English.' ... And the sands of our Imperial opportunity twirl through' the neck of the hour-glass."