TEN GENERATIONS OF GROWING GREATNESS

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5295, 7 January 1947, Page 2

TEN GENERATIONS OF GROWING GREATNESS

BRITI9H EXPANSION PROCESS THAT HAS NOW COME TO AN END Ten generations ago the British race consisted of something less than •7,000,000 persons living in a small group of islands off the coast of Ejurbpe, ®a'id Mr. Chalrles Carrington, Educational Manager of the Cambridge University Press, in a broadcast talk on Sunday. Quite sudidenly they began to change their habits and to swarm — one might almost say, as rabhits or as locusts swarm. They mrnltiplied and they scattered — with such speed as has never been equalled by any other race in history. At the end of ten generations this process slackened and stopped. And no a'dequate explanation has been given for its beginning, or its end. The British race now consists oi 140,000,000 — more or less — of whom two-thirds live outside their original home. By far the greater part of the Irish and a considerable majority oi iihe Scots ^iave gc^ie overseas for good. The English were more evenly divided between the old countries , and the new. I think it has hardly •been noticed that these British migrants have occupied every single region in the whole world which was empty 300 years ago, and which has a temperate climate. Thei*e has been nothing like this. in the history of other empires. It if unique; and it is a biological, not a political, event. Biut the story is now finished. In no part of the AngloSaxon world is the birthrate high enough to make such a process possible in the next generation. Men, Money, Machines *■ "Wihile the British multiplied an; replenished the earth, they also acquired a predominant control over the world's trade by means of their earlj monopoly in engineering. The expori of men was backed by the export oi manufactured goods in British ships manned by British seamen, driven or. British coal, controlled by British cables and telegraphs. Perhaps the strongest factor was the export oi capital which built up half the railways of the world. Britannia reallj ruled the waves when half the world'e trade was carried in ships under the Red Ensign and the other half ir ships that depended on British coal-ing-stations and British cable-stations Let us face the fact that the gooc old days are gone for ever. Just ae we English no longer have the mer, to export, so we no longer have the old monopoly. It is not that we are decadent or have lost ground. We stil extend our trade, hut we no longe1 expand alone. Other nations have caught us up. Russia is now expandinc biologically in the way that the Bi-it ish ©mpire once expanded and no one can yet say when the curve of he: growing population will flatten out The United States also has a stable population far larger and far riche" than that of the British Commonwealth. Rather more than half the descendants of those original Eliza bethan British now live under th Stars and Stripes — rather less thar half in Britain and the Dominions. I hope no one will think that, i: speaking for the Britsh Commonwealth, I speak against the Unitee States. Very moich the contrary. Bu there is still a unity of the Britisl race in which the Americans do no share, and we should appreciate it. T my mind it lies here: — The Fathers of the American Re public declared for the principle o

the melting-pot. America was to welcome emigrants from all nations an!: to a'bsorb them — amalgamate them— in to a new nation: with the resul that a 3 erman- American ,or even ar Anglo-Americar., is held to be a bar citizen. 'New Zealand was not madf that way. !It was bred from pur- , British stock, as was Australia And in the two multiple Dominions Canada and South Africa, the riva races have not fused into a commoi stock, as they might have done in thc ' United States. They have remainec separate and distinct in spite of th' efforts of enlightened statesmen fron he days of Lord Durham to the day.c of Field-Marshal Smuts. What Constitutes the Empire? What then are we left with wher we speak of thc ©mpire? It consists in the fist place, of Great Britai: and those Dominions — notably Nev Zealand and Australia — which ar British through and through, anc which cannot lose that characte: I whatever may be their politica' future. Secondly of those Dominions and Colonies where British principles of liberty and commott law have been extended to non-British peoples to their great benefit. Thirdlr thejre is a still . more intangible sphere of influence in all those wide regions of the world where the British langqage is spoken. The world-wide desire to learn English— even if it is pidgin-English or ibabuEngls'h it is better than nothing: the mere desire is a tribute to the British way of life. « On the whole, when we look round the world in 1946, these are sad days for liberty. Very little of it is to be seen anywhere outside the Englishspeaking world. Then all the more it is our duty to maintain the moral unity of those nations to whom free . principles come by right of birth. The saie of books, the growth of libraries, the free exchange of ideas between scientists and scholars, between (universities and technical institutes — these invade no man's rights, stir up no political jealousies, and may yet save civilisation. The great classics of English law and morality have migrated with the British peoples. Milton and Shakespeare belong to New Zealand as much as they belong to England. This is Imperialism in a sbape which need give us ho secret misgivings; which we offer freely to the "World. j