LABOUR AND EMPIRE
IVHEN the millions of British, especially English, folk made their slow but merry progress through the pavilions at 'Wembley, and learnt from the little and ingenious dramas and scene-paintings what the great Dominions were actually like, they did much more than attend a peepshow. The Exhibition did for the natural imagination of our people to-day very much what our seamen explorers did for the Elizabethans. Wembley set curiosity afoot, especially among the youngest visitors. It made the Empire a household word, an almost domestic reality. It had been to too many a rather flamboyant thing, " larger in extent than content," as the logicians say, a sonorous platitude, a half-empty brag. It became a real, friendly and contiguous place, as free from crude terrors as from the false glamour of the immigration agent.
Ever since the Exhibition started signs have multiplied of what may be called the domestication of the Empire, the bringing of it to a homely " hearth of thought," where the people of this crowded island might warm their hands and wits. Of all the signs none is more decisive or more welcome than a letter contributed by Mr. Ben Spoor to the Times at the end of last week. " If," he wrote, " Wembley this year can continue to impress on the public the value and potentialities of the British Empire, it will stimulate the movement to those lands still under British rule, where workers are needed, where vast acres are awaiting development, where a higher standard of comfort and a freer life are ultimately assured to all who seek them."
These are golden words ; but supposing a man of 165 political heredity had expressed such sentiments in such a place, even two years ago, he would have been regarded almost as a renegade to his creed. Mr. Kipling, with his " Little they know of England, who only England know," was quite recently discussed lky progressive critics as a capitalists' megaphone for daring to burden verse with such brazen sentiments. Wembley has helped to change all that or marvellously to accelerate the change. The exhibition was admirably. timed. When Mr. Amery spoke recently about Empire Settlement at the Royal Colonial Institute his most eloquent and persuasive supporter was Dr. Haden Guest, a fellow member of Mr. Spoor's party. Mr. Thomas, one of the most ardent advo- cates of Wembley, by conviction as well as ex officio, has progressively increased the fervour of his appeal to " think imperially." What a change since that phrase was coined ! It was then a red rag to many John Bulls. To-day it is waved with convinced zest by some of the most militant members of the Labour community. " Little Englanders " are becoming as extinct as the phrase itself.
Patriots will rejoice over this evolution of the Opposition, though purely party politicians may lament, for it is almost a mathematical certainty that if their road to power is paved with Imperial intentions they will arrive at their goal very much sooner and with a larger force. A letter such as Mr. Ben Spoor's, informed by a wide but concrete enthusiasm, is as effective a method of conversion to the Labour philosophy as the abstract visions expressed last week by the I.L.P. are vain. Our people are not to be persuaded by " imaginary axioms about nothing in particular." The contrast indicates that a final battle is to be waged within the ranks of the Labour Party between those who accept and welcome the Empire as the proper attribute of our national being and well-being, and those who preach in lieu of it the ideal of a world of little communities wobblihg in a vague jelly of inter- nationalism. The duel lies between a real Pax Britannica, supporting a League of Nations, and class warfare, disguised as a system of universal peace.
When the Labour Party were in office (though not in power) no part of their activities more astonished the general public than their initial success in foreign politics. The end did not quite carry out the promise of the begin- ning. Nevertheless, in many speeches and decisions rather more knowledge and understanding were exhibited in the foreign than in the domestic field. One reason for this, of which little has been heard, is that the members of the Labour Party travelled. To give one example. Groups of Labour Members, as well as individual Labour Members, continually visited the Ruhr during the crisis of 1923, and learnt the facts at first hand. They were almost the only British politicians who took the trouble to seek this direct personal evidence. The same source of information has been sought in. Imperial affairs. Partly by happy accident a good many members of the present Labour Party, notably Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Thomas, have stumped the Empire. At the same time, owing to " the shrinkage of the world," the speed of transport, and celerity of communication the Antipodes have been brought home to the most stagnant of us in a score of ways. Wembley itself is the best example. Again, who should be so well aware as a Trade Unionist that English firms are now bridging Sydney Harbour and building Australian ships ? Or who should be more keen to realize than the million unemployed that the population does not exceed two to the square mile in Canada and Australia, each of them a - Paradise of primary production ? No detail perhaps in recent politics is more remarkable than that the Independent Labour Party and Mr. Bruce, the Premier of Australia, last year developed almost simul- taneously the scheme of a Food Purchase Board—an idea likely to be very popular with those who bought—. was it 100 tons of Overseas apples over the counter at Wembley ! The coincidence is worth quoting merely as an illustration of the rather surprising fact that the Labour Party in Britain, having lost its parochial slur, is very much in sympathy with the Imperial thinkers overseas, and very much out of sympathy with that narrow i&inority—very vocal at the moment—who resist British immigration in a truly parochial spirit. But happily there are many signs that the Labour Govern- ments themselves, in Australia at any rate, are developing along much the same lines as Mr. Ben Spoor and his fellow members. Western Australia—whose Labour Premier has been visiting us—is a good example. Doubt- less the parochial spirit is hard to kill. It is as strong in Lesser Woolaboomooloo as in Little Muggleton ; but it shrinks. To-day, we can genuinely acclaim the evidence, indeed the proof, that the imagination of both Opposition and Government at home and overseas is similarly inspired to the grasp of the vital truth that the circle of British folk round this globe can insure its own prosperity by mutual self-help ; and so far as we can see by no other ,road. To establish equilibrium in a lop-sided empire is the solution of most of the relic ills of the indus- trial revolution. The Empire is an organization of nations whose centre is in every or any place where Britons congre- gate on British soil.
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