LORD CURZON ON IMPERIALISM.
T011D CURZON'S address as president for the year 4 of the Birmingham and Midland Institute on Wednesday is a revelation of a side of his, character, not indeed unsuspected, but hardly till,now appreciated at its real value. That he has been a singularly capable ruler we knew. That he possesses an exceptictnal know, ledge of the needs and conditions of the. British, Empire we knew. But in this address he appears as some- thing more than the builder or administrator of Empire. He can be its prophet as well. He can speak of it with the enthusiasm and emotion that become the poet. He can be the captive of his own eloquence, and be lost in the vision, of what the future has still in store for his countrymen if they will but be true to themselves and to their destiny. It, is well that great political issues should from time to time be treated in this. spirit. ;The work of an Imperial statesman may go on without such a stimulus as this. The ordinary business of administration, the solution of the recurrent problems which the care of dominions that embrace "about one- fourth of the world's surface and more than one-fourth of the world's inhabitants" . provides, furnishes ample employment for all his powers. But the commonplace citizen, the man whose notion of the Empire is altogether vague and indeterminate, born in him he knows not how and cherished by him he hardly knows why, wants from time to time to have shape and precision given to the word which he so often hears. He has an instinctive enthusiasm for the Empire; but instincts if they are to live and become intelligent must cease to be instincts only. They must be given a foundation in the reason, a permanent home in the imagination. This is the function that Lord Curzon has now performed with such eminent success. He teaches his hearers. and his larger public of readers to think of the Empire as " the result, not of an accident or a series of accidents, but of an ineradicable and divinely implanted impulse, which hai sent the Englishman forth into the uttermost parts of the, earth, and , made him , there the parent of new societiee, and. the architect of unpremeditated creations.", Those who paint this picture are sometimes met by the inquiry what the Englishman gains by yielding to this impulse. Would he not be far better employed if, instead. of dreaming about Imperial expansion, he busied himself with improving the condition of the three tiny kingdoms: that are the'kernel and- the centre of this .Empire about which so' many "wild and whirling" words are often used ? Lord Curzon states the answer to this question with admirable truth and force. He asks us to pause for s moment and consider the consequences of devoting Sour, selves exclusively "to the task of strengthening the centre, which by that time would be a centre of. nothing, because its circumference would have ceased to exist." How would the English working man fare without the Empire ?' Kingdoms cannot any more than men live by bread alone. They must be supported and kept alive by something that, appeals to the. emotions which are the natural heritage, of a governing race. These emotions would have no natural resting-place in men who have, allowed the greatness which their fathers gained to slip away from them un- heeded. "The priceless asset of the national character,. without a world to conquer or a duty to perform, would rot of atrophy and inanition." Even if we suppose that we and. our Colonies have parted com- pany by mutual consent, this would not save us from the disgrace of letting India go. No misuse of words would in the end hide from us the damning fact that we had allowed a territory to which we had given tranquillity and order to become a stage for the rival ambitions of the razes whom we had forced to live side by side in peace. It is true that we should not have to watch this humbling spectacle long. India would again become the possession of some Power eager to take up the ,work we had abandoned. We question, however, whether the most ardent sympathiser with Indian discontent would derive much satisfaction from seeing India governed by Russian or German methods rather than by those to which we have accustomed it. The spectacle might console the British pocket, but it certainly would.not soothe the British conscience. . Nor, indeed, would even the British pocket have, in the end, any cause to congratulate itself on the change. India under Russian or German rule would be a very different customer from the India that we know. And then with India gone raid the Colonies gone, "with the Navy reduced, for there would be nothing. but these, shores for it to defend, and with a email Army confined. to home service, what would be the fate of eur home population " ? We com- mend Lord Curzon's question., to every anti-Imperialist, if indeed- mph e being really exists.. " &Maud from,haviug been the arbiter would siiik at the best into the inglorious playground of the world People would come to see us just as they climb the Acropolis at Athens or ascend the waters of the Nile." Unattractive as such a destiny might be, we should have no choice but to put up with it, for the resource of emigration would be denied to us. Englishmen would have nowhere where they could plant themselves without ceasing to be Englishmen. They would no longer find a welcome in what had once been their Colonies, because a separation brought about by our indifference alike to the aspirations which an Empire feeds, and to the responsibilities which an Empire imposes, would have earned the just contempt of the communities we had left to their fate. Nor, indeed, would that fate be in all cases one that they would care to be left to. The politicians who from time to time succeed in persuading themselves that the dissolu- tion of the Empire would mean the setting up in every part of the world of small Anglo-Saxon communities enjoying a safe and cheap independence take a very inadequate view of the ambitions of other Powers.
Separated from us, what could the majority of our Colonies do in the way of self-defence? The European nations generally have not attained to that sublime indifference to the possession of territory which we have assumed to be possessed by ourselves. They would see in our repudiation of Empire an invitation to a division of our abandoned possessions, and in their newly conquered colonies an Englishman would be the last man to find a welcome. "Our emigrants, instead of proceeding to lands where they could still remain British citizens and live and work under the British flag, would be swallowed up in the whirlpool of American cosmopolitanism, or would be converted into foreigners and aliens."
There is one paragraph in Lord Curzon's address with which, or rather with the inferences that may possibly be drawn from it by hasty readers, we are less in agreement. It may be due to our own feebleness of imagination, but we are not greatly impressed by his glowing picture of an Empire the government and unity of which, "as typified by the Sovereign, should from time to time be incarnated in the allied States or Dominions." The Emperor Hadrian's journeys may have had "results that left an enduring and beneficent mark on the Roman Empire," but it is at least as true that the decline of that Empire dates from the time when the Emperors deserted Rome for other capitals. That the Crown will more and more tend to be • the chief force that binds the Empire together is likely enough, nor do we question the accuracy of Lord Curzon's pre- diction that an Empire which "had no visible bead but a Prime Minister, or even the President of a Republic, would not last for twenty-five years." But this uniting force would hardly become more effective for its purpose by ceasing to have a fixed dwelling-place. The tariff problem Lord Curzon is willing to leave to be solved a quarter of a century hence, "if then," and with this treatment of it we are quite content. When, however, he assigns the same interval to the defence problem—" i.e., the question how the Empire is to divide the burden of military and naval defence between its members "—we cannot but think that it is far wiser to leave it to a wholly dateless future. A partition of the burden of defence implies a relation between the several parts of the Empire which may come into being some day, but certainly is not in being now. When sincere but inaccurate Imperialists—we do not, it is needless to say, include Lord Curzon in this category —talk of "partner States" each contributing its quota to the defence and helping to shape the policy of the common Empire, they forget that to make such a pro- portionate contribution possible there must be a far nearer approach to equality between the members than there is any chance of living men seeing realised. The policy of the British Empire must be shaped by Britain, and to prevent this necessity from irritating other portions of the Empire, upon Britain must fall the sacrifices involved in carrying that policy into action.
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