THE EMPIRE'S DESTINY

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 5 August 1915, Page 2

THE EMPIRE'S DESTINY

THE writer of "The War in Europe" returns to the moral basis for the continuance of the Empire, and concludes: —'; If in resisting the expansion of Germany, we are fighting for the ideas realised in our own Empire we can learn one lesson from her. We may well admire the ardour and self-sacrifice of hexpeople for the cause they believe in. The temptation of the disciplined state may be to pride and cruelty. The danger to the free state is that its inhabitants will cease to make the efforts by which alone their freedom is ensured. Yet the price of liberty no less than of empire is sacrifice and suffering. Indolence and an unreadiness to make sacrifices undermined the strength both of Greece and Rome. It has gone some way to endanger the British Empire. For 20 years we have known the danger that threatened us, yet we have taken no step •to remodel our institutions, nor to consider how best the Empire can create and concentrate in the decisive spot the forces on which its existence depends, In resolving to fight the great struggle against autocracy and militarism to the bitter finish, whatever it may cost in men and money, let us also resolve to face, more thoroughly than we have in the past, what our stupendous responsibilities as guardians of a system which gives peace and opportunities of self-development 'to one-quarter of the human race, entail. In this task we can exhibit something of the hero spirit of Germany, and something of the great-hearted ness which counts no sacrifice too great, no cost too high, to carry on to the end the great political work which destiny has laid upon us.

For we, no less than the Germans have our destiny. But our Empire is not one which needs blood and war and a mailed fist diplomacy to make its way. It is an Empire of ideas, ideas forged in the long course of our history by fym and Hampden, Cromwell, Chatham, Wilberforce, Pitt, Gladstone, Salisbury, defended by a not less noble band, Wolfe and Wellington, Nelson, Lawrence and Nicholson, who have risked or given their lives for the country where these ideas were born, and carried broadcast over the world by the example and not the swords of that great unknown army of men and women who, exiled in the scorching plains of India or on theilonely outposts of fever-ridden dependencies, have steadfastly upheld for generations the reputation and the justice of the British name."