NEGLECTED EMPIRE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 485, 8 October 1948, Page 24

NEGLECTED EMPIRE

| TWENTIETH CENTURY EMPIRE. By

H.

V.

Hodson.

Faber and Faber, London.

. HODSON’S thesis is that.the old Britis? Empires are dead, and in the cifferent conditions of to-day we must be up and doing with new ideas and energy to develop our estate, or indeéd to save it in a world of rival ideologies. The first’ British Empire, he says, ended with the American Revolution. The second lasted until Dominion self-government replaced colonial dependence in the settlement colonies. The third, the Commonwealth as we have known it for many years, lasted till the end of the second world war. If there had been no British Empire, says Mr. Hodson, it would have been necessary to create one. Between Waterloo and the war of 1914 it prevented or localised wars, and was accepted by the world because at best it was useful and at worst it was never a-menace. In the first world war, however, it nearly went under, and was saved by America. This happened again in the second war, into which the Empire entered pitifully unprepared, theugh it should be noted that Britain -was in better shape than the Dominions. Now we have given India her freedom: Burma has left us; the Mother Country has .been gravely weakened; the wine of nationalism is going to the heads of | colonia! peoples; strategic, economic, 'and social problems press on all sides. Yet in this critical period there is no | Committee of Imperial Defence, and, | when Mr. Hodson wrote, the Imperial

Conference as a method of r ular } consultation had lapsed. , Mr. Hodson’s contention is that the Empire has always been more or less. neglected. It has been: treated, in" his phrase, as pasture land rather than. arable. Twice it came near to extinction, because the. British are an "in-

curably optimistic’ race, who trust to Providence and are apt to neglect distarit problems. The colonies proper were run on the principle that they were not to be exploited, but were not to be a charge on the British taxpayer. Only in the last few years have large- | scale development plans been framed ' and put into operation-at the British | taxpayer's expense. Ey . * * ‘HERE was drift in India. Mr. Hodson recognises the benefits Britain has conferred on India, but his criticism _of policy and administration is pungent. His picture of British authority in re--lation to the peoples of India, descending to such details of officialdorh’s daily life as the primitivenéss of sanitaticn and the scandal of the sickshaw-coolie (who, one hopes. will be abolished tiroughout the East forever), is the most @ntertaining part of the book. The j headings "Thick Red Tape" and "Broad

Red Carpet" are significant. The British: allowed too great a gulf to exist between them and the people. In Mr. Hodson’s opinion, giving India her freedom was absolutely the right thing to do, but Britain has it on her conscience that she handed over responsibility for government without having adequately prepared Indians to run it. Beware of bureaucracy, he warns us, especially when it is isolated, and points to Canberra as well as to New Delhi. and Simla. India faces an inevitable social and economic revolution and it will be a fight to the death. It is better, says Mr. Hodson, that this should come without the presence of an alien authority. Had Britain remained in India, she might have fallen with India to destruction, but to-day she is in a position to exercise a rescuing and healing power. However, the responsibility for the neglect of the Empire is by no means Britain’s alone. The Dominions, Mr. Hodson points out, have never borne their fair share of defence. To-day they are sovereign States. They talk gener alities, but they don’t act with sufficient energy or foresight or sense of unity. Nervous of local politics, they are chary of "ganging up." Mr. Hodson pleads for a co-operative Commonwealth. He would have regional commissions . to supervise defence and economic development, and in Britain a Commonwealth Council, which would lead to a form of central government. He even sets out the composition of a Commonwealth "Assembly." Britain, he warns us, must be powerful or nothing.

The slogan "World power or downfall" was never true of Germany, but though not in the sense of the old "Imperium," it is true of the British Isles. Before the war there were disillusioned tired people who asked why Britain should not become another Denmark or Norway. As Mr. Hodson says, the auswer came to

them in 1940. In the new meaning of the key word, there is still such a thing as "the craven fear of being great." And if Britain goes, what becomes of

us in the outer seas? 7.

A.

M.