The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1. THE EMPIRE'S OUTLOOK.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 178, 1 September 1909, Page 2

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1. THE EMPIRE'S OUTLOOK.

The Melbourne Argus has taken up the duty—or a share of the ■duty—of arousing Australians to a sense of the necessity for active preparation for practising -the first law of national life, selfpreservation, ill the face, not of immediate danger, but of not improbaole dnngcr. With a question as a text, ' Has any empire, has even any nation, ever perished except through an internal collapse?" Ohe Melbourne daily glances over the catalogue of fallen nations and empires, and finds the answer there 'm an exceptionless negative. And from the -same review of the past comes out the converse, that 310 nation sound at heart was ever permanently kept down by an external power. Tyre perished, and (Cartilage. Greece, was swallowed up

by liomc, and this great world power I in its turn fell to pieces'; so, too, did Venice, after a thousand years of prosperity and power. Germany has been evolved as a jjreat Power by the cultivation of a spirit of national unity. Japan has risen by imbuing her young people with the idea, of the possibility of rising; and the actual rise did not take long a her ease. So the actual fall of a vast empire may not take long, if vastness is not equalled by greatness, and held together by a strong sentiment of Imperial unity. The British Empire is vast. Is it also great?—is it 1111 iled? It is on all hands admitted that Intia Is a weak s]H>t. Here, few know the truth with precision; but those who profess to know, who express themselves in tflie journals of the Old Country, tell us that India must be held, with somewhat more difficulty than' formerly; cannot be counted on as an clement m the Imperial unity. It is an empire apart, with a tendency to separate itself altogether. India, as a part oif the British Empire, is in the Imperial sense an external burden', not a participant factor. What of the remainder, the "British," the truly "all-red" dominions? Are tilie.se "thinking Imperially." recognising the risks they run if empire does not siic'i unity and fitness for empire?

A fc>' weeks ago the air was full of hinh if danger. Nothing has occurred t.o If"",i wlialever danger there was; tu return to the Argus: "If Iflir Ivnpirc lie destroyed, if Australia fall into the .maw of some earth-devour-ing world-power, it will lie our own fault—'the fault o'f Britain, the fault of Australia, the fault of the Empire—the result of an intern"! disease, some lack of unity and of discipline. But preparation, efficiency, and discipline are, after nil, merely earth-hound things. They require ideals to animate tihem." Our Melbourne contemporary appears to de. spair of the adults of' to-day, for the writer looks for salvation to the next generation, yet fears that the outlook is unpromising, filial the Meals required are not heing inculcated in the scWSols i"f Australia, primary or secondary. They do not "tend to produce a devolefl I citizenship. A smart, cunning *splf-"n-terest rather than patriotic devotion, a

love of ease and comfort rather than honor—that is what we are in danger of producing and heing complacently I satisfied with, lint that means internal ► decay, not heing fit but being unfit, not | unity and health and discipline, hut ego- ► ism and disintegration. It will mean de- ► cay of the Empire as far as Australia !* if concerned, and decay of Australia, si) far as Australia is concerned, depends on the private and internal efficiency of the life of our people; and that, again, depends on our schools. The old race and the results of the old English training are disappearing fast. It is the new race and the new training that are going to count in our national efficiency. If our schools fail ns, then as surely as the sun rises to-morrow, Australia will fall into hands of a race, more fit than ourselves and more worthy than we t.re of the lmrden of national life.'' If the school children fail us it is because their f parents have lost the way, and these I must .find it again hefore the sehcolr master can lie abroad in that field.