At the fifth annual meeting of the Newlands Corner, Guild-
ford, branch of the Victoria League on Saturday last Lord Cromer spoke in praise of sane Imperialism :—
"He said advisedly sane Imperialism, and not mere Imperialism, for they all knew that there were two kinds of Imperialism. One was aggressive. It not infrequently took the form of earth- hunger. It raised passions and ambitions which were foes to peace. In politics it was apt to slide from a breach of the Tenth to a strong temptation to violate the Eighth Commandment. To an Imperialism of that sort he, for his part, would have nothing to say. The alternative Imperialism recognised that, perhaps more by accident than design, the supreme direction of a world- wide Empire had been entrusted to this country, and it inquired how in the general interests of civilisation and publics morality, that responsible trust could best be executed. And the answer to that question was, by decentralisation and by conferring rights of local self-governmeut on dependencies wherever such a course was possible, and, where it was impossible, by governing the subject-race in a manner consonant with its interests."
Lord Cromer added that patriotism, in the right sense of the word (and of course it needs, as much as Imperialism, careful definition), was an innate quality ; but to some extent it could be, and ought to be, taught in schools. It was an antidote to the extremes of self-depreciation and self-glorification to which this country was unduly disposed. These remarks seem to us to contain all the Law and the Prophets in the matter of Imperialism, and they appropriately came from the greatest and sanest of sane Imperialists.
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