SHOULD BRITAIN SECEDE

Hokitika Guardian, 2 December 1930, Page 3

SHOULD BRITAIN SECEDE

SOUTH AFRICAN SUPPOSITION. EMPIRE OF REPUBLICS. -7 What, I wonder, would happen if at some Imperial Conference ... Great Britain announced her intention of exercising her “right of secession” and withdrawing: from tlreu Empire and all its terrific burdens (writes Mr Vere Stent" in the “National Review”). Suppose the Imperial Government said, “We will have no more concern with any of you. Protect your own coasts,market your -own wares, constitute yourselves republics, kingdoms, what vou please, but don’t bother' us any'

more. AVe shall buy in the cheapest market, give up preference* aiul sell: where best, it suits us. You.: may-fight amongst yourselves, indulge in ' i!evolutions as you please; you', may goad" vour natives to: mutiny and suppress it as best you can.” J.f, then, Great* Britain, with all its wealth, its high civilisation. and its brain-power,, chose rather to join the European concert than shoulder any longer the obligations of an oversea Empire, what would happen? What a howl of indignation would go up. what shouts of treachery.. A 7 et somehow. I think, sometimes, that if T were not a colonial. T might be inclined to ha’ done with all this Irish, Indian, Egyptian, South African bickering and to turn these ungrateful children adrift- to shift for themselves. What shall it profit a man if he gain the wholeworld and lose his own soul? Sometimes I fear that the soul of the English is like to he lost in the Protean ramifications of the British Empire that lie round the globe and from pole to pole. High treason! Tsn’t it? Of course it is. AA T e English, borne where we may be. cannot shirk our destiny. I only put a sunpbsititious case in order to bring home to many what membership of the British Empire really means. The best wav to realise that is to imagine that Empire disintegrated and scattered into tiny republics, states and principalities like South America.