THIS BRITISH EMPIRE

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5303, 16 January 1947, Page 7

THIS BRITISH EMPIRE

WHAT TENUOUS HOLD ON 140,000,000 PEOPLE? t To pass from an English winter to a New Zealand summer in four days' flying time, counfounds ideas of time and space. One may put the clock on two or four • hours a day, but cannot so easily adjust the body's rhythms. One wakes in the night wondering when and where he is. But these trips on the modern magic carpet give a new picture of the unity of western civilisation. How'very much alike we all are — in spite of some superficial differences — and how much we have in common, said Mr. Charles Carrington, Educational Manager of the Cambridge University in a recent broadcast.

I have come back to >New Zealand — after years in England — on a business visit and feel at once as if I had never been away. In those years poor shabby England has changed much more than this lucky land. There were may times, of late years, in London where I sawJ" myself in the cbaracter of whom Macaulay wrote a l^un]dred years ago — itjhat future New Zealaner who. was to stand upon a broken arch of London Bridge and "in the midst of a vast solitude" to sketcb the ruins of Saint Paul's. London Bridge, I am glad to say, is not yet broken down; but Saint Paul'a stands, somewhat battered, in a great open space of ruins overgrown with weeds and wild-flowers — and symbolises something, a civilised and a Christian tradition triumphing over the horrors of this generation. I sometimes think that the British C o-m moww e a 1 th 'is an alrea of free thought. If not, just what is it Certainly not an Empire, for it has no sovereign legislative or executive power. Without doubt it is something — because me nin thoussands are willing to die for it, and, what is more, are willing to live for it? Certainly not an Empire, for therefore quite in-comprehensible to dull materialists. Ten generations ago the British Race, with which I include the Irish, consisted of something less than 7,000,000 persons living in a small e|i*oup of islands off tl^e jcoast of Europe. Quite suddenly they began to change their habits and to swarm — one might almost say, as rabbits or as locusts swarm They multiplied and they scattered — with such speeld ,as has never ^eeln equalled by any other ^ f ace in history. At the end of 10 generations this pr-o-cess slackened and stopped. And no adequate explanation has been given for its beginning — or its end. The British Race now eonsists of 140,000,000 — more or less — of whom two-thirds live outside their origirfal home. By far the greater part of the Irish, and a considerable majority of the Scots have gone overseas for good. The English were more evenly divided hetween the old countries and the new. I think it has hardly been noticed that these British migrants have occupied every singde region in the Whole world which was empty 300 years ago, and which has a temperate climate. There has been nothing like this, and there could he nothing like this, in the history of other empires. It is unique; and it is a hiological, not a political event. War and conquest had very little to do with it. But the story is now finished. In no part of the Anglo-Saxon world is the birthrate high enough to make such a process possible in the next generation. While the British multiplied and replenished the earth, they also acqiiired a predominant control over the world's trade by rneans of their early monopoly in engineering. The • export of men was backed by the export of manufactured goods in British ships, manned by British seamen, driven on British coal, controlled by British cables and telegraphs. Perhaps the strongest factor was the export of capital which built up half the railways of the world. Britannia really ruled the waves when half the world's trade was carried in ships under the Red Ensign and the other half in ships that depended on British coaling-stations and British cable-stations. Old Days Gone We like to think that we have a mqture understanding of politics and can face realities from which some other nations shy away, Well, let us face the fact that the goo'd old days are gone for ever. Just as we English no longer have the men to export — so we no longer have the old monopoly. It is not that we are decadent or , have lost ground. We still extend that trade — 'but we

no longer extend alohe Other nations have caught us up. -Russia is now expan'ding — biologically — in the way that the British Empire once expanded — and no one can yet say when the •curve of her growing population will flatten out. The United Btates also has a stable population far larger and far richer than that of the 'British Commonwealth. Rather more than half the_ descendants of those original Elizabethan British now live under the Stars and Stripes — rather less than half in Britain and the Dominions. I hope no one will think that, in speaking for the British Commonwealth, I speal: against the United States. Very much the contrary! But there is still a unity of the British Race in which the Americans do not share, and we should appreciate it. To my mind it lies here: The Fathers -of the American Republic declared for the principle of the melting-pot. America was to welcome emigrants fi'om all nations and to absorb them — amalgamate them — into a new national ' type — a new nation; with the result \ that a German- American, or even an I Anglo-American, is held to be a bad j citizen. j New Zealand was not made that j way. It was bred from pure British • , stock, as was Australia. And in the ; two multiple Dominions — Canada and I South Africa — the rival races have i not fused into a common stock, as j they might have done in the United i States. They have remained sepai'ate j and distinct in spite of the efforts ! of enlightened statesmen from the days of Lord Durham to the days of Field-Marshal Smuts. Encourage Liberties The genius of the British Empire has acted to encourage local liberties, ' not to combine them into a grearer politijCal unity. What then a-re we left with when we speak of the Empire ? It eonsists, in the first place, of j Great Britain, ^and those Dominions ' — notably New Zealand and Austraj lia — which are Biitish through and throtigh, and which cannot lose that j character, whatever may be their i political future. And secondly, of ! those ' Dominions and Colonies where j British prineiples of libeiky and the 1 Common Law have been extended to non-British peoples — to their great benefit. And thirdly there is a still more intangible sphere of influence in all those wide regions of the world where the British language is spoken. The world-wide desire to learn English — even if it is pidgin-English or babu-English it is hetter than nothing; the mere desire is a tribute to the British way of life. Every naked African knows that this is the secret to the White Man's Magic. The missionary and the trader alike carry with them something — perhaps rather faint and diluted — but something of those British prineiples. Some critics of our Empire, urged I think by jealousy, seem to suppose tjhat British Inipelrialism — horrid word! — is a matter of exploitation and conquest. It isn't, and it never I was. I Politics did not make the British j Commonwealth — and. politics will not , hold it together in these difficult ! days. It was made by the natural expansion of a people and is held together by their devotion to an idea. Many of those who emigrated brolce away and formed a new idea — the American idea. Mind you — I say nothing against it — I merely observe that it is different. , Many other nations came under the proteetion of the British and profited from the British idea. What the British enjoyed by right of ibirth they could confer on others. Half the :*great cities of Asia: Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore, Hong K'ong — were made by the flocking of Asiatics from less happy lands to British posts I where they could enjoy the blessings of our laws and liberty There must j have bean so^methinjg advdntageous J to attract them — and it still exists. i '