REDISCOVERY OF BRITISH EMPIRE.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 July 1917, Page 6

REDISCOVERY OF BRITISH EMPIRE.

T" THE BRITISH PEOPLE. IT HAS MADE THE HOMELAND DEAKER TO US ALL AND AWAKr\!'i> i,in; overdue homage TO THE OF THE EMPIIiE WHO LAID IN SILENCE and luiuismp its FOUNDATIONS.

London, Juno 10. "Tlio history'of lvnirlis-li literature is flip story of what groat English men and .women thought and felt "awl then wrote down in {rood prose or beautiful poetry in tho English language. The story is of long ago. It begin? about the year fi7o and it i< still going on. "No people tha„ have ever been in the world can look hack so far as we English can to tho beginnings of our literature: flo people can point to so long and 'splendid a train of poets and prose writers: no nation lias on the whole written so much and so well.

"Every English man and woman has good reason to bo proud of the .work done by their forefathers in prose and ipoctry. Everyone who can write a good book or a good song may say to himself, 'I Iwlong to a great company which lias been teaching and delighting the world for more than 1000 years.' "To think of Tennyson's 'Queen Mary.' and then of Caedmon's Paraphrase, and of the great and the continuous stream of literature that has (lowed between them, is more than enough to make us all proud of the name of Englishmen."— Stopford Brooke.

Ono of the unexpected and unintended "blessings which the German Emperor iias conferred upon Hip British people is to discover or re-discover to them the people and the vastne-s and potentialities of their own British 'Empire. It has made the Homeland and its long history dearer to us all. and it has awakened a long overdue sense of homage to those far-sighted pioneers .who went out from the Mother Country not knowing whither they went, and laid in silence and with the might of their hands the foundations of the great Emriire which is now helping to make the world safe for Democracy.

And this awakening to a mutual knowledge of those at home and those beyond the spas will have never ending results. Eeeh will realise more keenly that tliev are bound together by an "unbroken chain" which threads all the wonderful years of their common history, one of the mos.. wonderful tales that has ever been told. One gets some idea in tow articles in the Times Educational Supplement. Jlr. IT. I). Skinner. D.C.M., lately with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, (a New Plymouth boy), .writing on "The Unbroken Chain," says:

A NEW ZEALANDER IN EGYPT

''l suppose (lie average New Zealand infantryman coming away from homa to play a "part in ti'iis war brought with him fewer impressions of history and of the past than any other soldier who came over (in- sen. Tor his own island's history hardly exists. To him the past ,s empty. Standing at the entrance of the central hall of the Museum at Cairo, gazing at the great statue of Rameses 11. and his wife, and trying to interpret that faint, inscrutable smile of hers, he must have realised .with a shock of surprise the immense unbridged gulf of time that lies between Pharaoh and the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. "Perhap-- the apparent break between New Zealand, newest of all States, and the ancient civilisations of Europe and the East, mav have come into his mind again as he looked on a summer evening from Inibros across the sea to '1 enedos and t'.ie smooth slope, o! Aci.i Italia, and realised that the low shore line between them mr.vked. in part. Ibe plain of Troy. Again the fal-e impression of a gap In human hi-Mon- arose when, wounded, but aide to get, about, lie sa.w at Malta the mcaiithb- temples above ground ami thai s!:T.ngi- nesalith cut in the living limestone, far below the surface. THE Xi:\V ZEALANDER IX ENGLAND

"But anv illusion that mav have ari-on of a break in history hot-ween Groat "Britain anil the Dominions is dispelled hy a week- or two spent in England. For hero, all about us, we mav sec work-in? the institutions of law and justice that are at work, under a somewhat different guise, in our own land overseas. We can hear the same tongue spoken, can appreciate much the same point of view, can assent to the same ideals. More convincing still is the evidence of one's eyeg. Old houses, ancient walls, the groat cathedrals, the collections in English museums, arc perhaps the most convincing evidence of all that English history is unbroken and continuous. But if that continuity is to he realised all these things must he seen. •The Briton overseas must visit Great Britain before be realises tliat she is truly the Motherland. How can the truth be made clear to the untravelled ones who are the great majority and who will never cross the sea? We cannot >hare your ■houses, your wails, your 'cathedrals but we have what is capable of expansion into an important point of contact in our museums."

These he suggests might be used to dcmon-lrate the organic unity of the Empire and to prove that the flominions are not separate State* hut the "hran'clies of a gre.it and ancient tree."

"There should be in cvcy oversea museum an introductory historical collection designed to illustrate the cr>:;■tii'iiity in these new lands of Enslis-h institutions ami English life." ■WHO ONLY EXCLAXD KXOW. "In a query that line become well worn, Mr .Kiplinir suicresis tiiat homobred KnulWimeii know nothing of tlic jjrextness of l.°:<<:land. How best can the greatness of England be brought homo to those who are British born who cannot, travel? How best can no teach childhood am! youth in these islands the les-on il? Imperial greatness? One answer (o these ouostions is: By the. establishment of an Imperial Museum. "There is no tangible public possession of which Englishmen are more justly proud than of the groat collections housed in the British Museum. That the lighting of many (If the galleries is an bad a* could be, or that many of them are hopelessly overcrowded, counts »* little. It is the completeness of the collections, their astonishing wealth in ethnographic and historical material, that make them the pride of all who 'visit them, whether they he from Great or (ireatur Britain. There will, come a time—and we may hope thp.t this war has brought it close—when t li.it part of the collections which relates to Great (Britain and her expansions overseas will be set out, as an Imperial Museum should be, to illustrate the ethnology tai l&Jorj of Jus Kmpirc, Here at laat

the magnificent India Museum, rescued Irom obscurity in South Kensington, would find a worthy place. "On such lines as those suggested above tho museums of tho Empire can do their part in solving Imperial problems. Their contribution will not be a 'direct one. It will eonsi-t in helping to produce an atmosphere of as-ent to Imperial union, -.-.liifli, if not perhaps so obvious as some other contributions, will be a condition precedent (n the sueces.sful operation of them all."

OX A NEW ZEALAND VERANDAH. Another article b y a « PII , )U , Bl . iloo , .Master' gives another view of this problem.

"Two years ago. on a suniiv verandah in Xew Zealand," he says, "I was talkin" to a young fellow of twentv-onc, who was about to start for the* war. "I don't want to go," he said: "I'm youno-. and I've got a good life before me: but •it isn't fair that the English-bom should lie doing it alone. After all, we're the same blood.' There was the feeling of kinship speaking, the call of the blood. East autumn tho same young officer, after being wounded on the Somme, was staying with me in Gloucestershire. I asked him what he thought of the British officer. 'He's all right; was the reply, 'but he doesn't seem to know anything about us: thinks we're not civilised; wonders whether we know what a dinner jacket and black tie mean.' The example of ignorance given is, at first sight, utterly trivial, but the truth that lies beneath it has its importance.

IGNORANCE OF THE DOMINIONS "Why is it that we have many schoolmasters and schoolmistresses who are enthusiastic over classics or modern languages, but comparatively few that can speak with sympathy or understanding of the Dominions? 'Partly because they have been able to visit the scenes where the great dramas of the past have been played'and to repeople the ruins of bygone ages with their actors, or have wandered in the countries of modern Europe, learning to know their peoples and to understand, if they do not always sympathise with, their ideals and aspirations. To some extent we have understood what Ruskin felt as he gazed upon the keeps of Granson and Jonx, when we have visited the Parthenon at Athens or lingered amidst the ruins of Tintern. Those feelings we have brought back to the class-room, and they have helped to make our work more fruitful.

"I shall never forget the feelins of admiration for the early colonists that swept over me as I drove through lands that a few short years before had been thick l>n=li and forest, and were then carpeted with rich {Trass and dotted with aruzing herds: or a man wbo told me, amidst his golden fields ripening to harvest, how, as a young man, he had had to jump from nigger-head to nigger-head at the risk of a ducking in the marsh that was now covered with wheat and oats.

THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW COUNTRIES.

"But it is not for the purpose of describing accurately and in a more interesting' manner the material life of the lands" beyond the sea that first-hand knowledge is necessary; a great deal of such knowledge, as some people would say, can be obtained from books. What books cannot give is the spirit that is moving in these 7ie\v countries. "The grammar of the Empire must be learnt as much as the grammar of U»lin or French, but grammar is only a means to an end: there must always be present the feeling of life and human interest behind the duller work of facts and figures; .we must try not only to keep hefore the miu is of our pupils the streams of human endurance, valor, and virtue which have rendered the present possible, but also the ever-welling springs of human efforts. ideaH, and aspirations which can change the present into a more glorious future.

'•Such an atmosphere of reality and possibility must emanate from the teacher. Not only musi-, lie take advantage of opportunities that arise during the course of the lesson, but he must use those odd moments which occur so often, when the actual work is finished, to lead the conversation to topics which will lease seed thoughts in the minds of his pupils. A VISION OF THE DOMINIONS.

'To create this atmosphere pre-sup-poses an acquaintance with his subject similar to that .which he very likely ha 3 with the ancient civilisation or the modern nations of Western Europe; .such a knowledge is impossible, however, unless ho has visited, nay more, has dwelt in one or other of these new lands. How many of the teachers of Great Britain have ever been in the Dominions beyond the seas ; how many of them can summon up the vision: "As the sheep come slowly stringing Claucy rides behind them singing. For the farmer's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know; And the bush has friends to meet him and their kindly voices greet him In the murmur of the breezes and th" river on its bars; And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit, plains extended, And at night the .wondrous glory of the everlasting stars." AN EXCHANGE OF TEACIIEKS.

The writer suggests ihat there should I)c an exchange of teachers between tlie many parts of the Kmpire.

"Tiie Dominion teacher who (comes home will have as much to gain as tlie English; lie knows the history of tlie land he is coming to, but it is hard for him to realise the great complexity of the problems that are wailing for solution in tho old country. He cannot realise Ihe density of the population, or the life that is led by the, toilers in our great cities. On Ithe more purely technical side his experience will be enriched by coining into contact with educational institutions of great antiquity and by meeting men whose powers have been sharpened by tho greater competition of mind and brain that exists in tlie Motherland.

"With such a system in operation the horizon of every school would be expanded, the inert mental attitude of tlie staff and pupils towards the Commonwealth would yield to a more living interest. The visitors would become the centre of a new spirit, whose influence would gradually pervade the whole. As the boy s pa's on from master to master they will gradually acqifije a conception, not only of their glorious heritage, but also of' the duties and sacrifices which it entails. And they will learn at last "To find our welfare in the general good, To bind together men of all degrees In one wide brotherhood."