FUTURE OF THE EMPIRE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4368, 20 January 1922, Page 3

FUTURE OF THE EMPIRE

100 YEARS HENCE. “The British Empire a Century Hence” was the subject discussed with varying degrees of gloom at a dinner held at the Cannon Street Hotel, London, of the Delphian Coterie.

The secretary read a letter from Mr H. G. Wells, who said, "I hope and believe that 100 years hence there will be no British Empire. Either it will have played. its part in the development of civilisation and have changed into a much larger union of free States, or it will have become a danger and a nuisance to mankind and have followed German imperialism and Roman imperialism to the dust heap.”

Sir H. Rider Haggard said he could not agree with Mr Wells. He thought the British Empire was the most beneficent power that God Almighty had raised upon this earth and the loss of it w’ould be a blow to the future of the world. The advent of women to power would pro founded! y affect the institutions of humanity.

- The Empire could only be saved by an infusion into it of an adequate? population of our own blood. There was room in .the Empire for three or four hundred millions of the British race. Australia for her own security should welcome every drop of EngTish blood we could send her.

Dean Inge thought that in a century’s time? these islands would have fallen from their pride of place an.l would be only one among several Dominions. They would be no longer the centre of a. world Empire in which they had the dominating power. Rather there would be a tendency on the-part of the other British-speaking peoples to gravitate towards the vast power 'of the United States.