THE EMPIRE IN ACTION.
"AT last !" was the cry of satisfaction with which the Toronto Company, engaged in the brilliant little fight at Sunnyside on New Year's Day, received the order to double into action against the Boer laager. And as the Canadians rushed gladly forward to a point whence their fire speedily subdued that of the enemy, from other directions the Queensland contingent, part of it under the immediate command of Colonel Pilcher, who was in charge of the whole excellently-managed expedi- tion, advanced with equal cheeriness and equal effect. The Queenslanders, laughing and chatting under fire, moved steadily towards the Boer position, taking advan- tage of every bit of cover, and only firing when they saw some one to aim at. The result of these converging movements was that the enemy were completely defeated ; Colonel Pilcher, as he reported officially, taking their laager and forty prisoners, besides killed and wounded. No great affair this, indeed, from a purely military point of view, though of very real value in its effect on the security of Lord Methuen's communications. But this action at Sunnyside strikes us, and we are convinced will strike our readers, as affording, if on a small, Yet on a perfectly accurate scale, a presentment of one of the most important facts that ever did, or ever could, happen in the history of the world. That fact is the evolution of an effective unity in action throughout the world-wide British realm.
It has repeatedly been pointed out that, in the tropical heats of the Northern portions of Australia —much of Queensland, the so-called Northern Territory of South Australia, in which Port Darwin lies, and a large part of the territory of Western Australia—men of British race were evolving, and would increasingly evolve, characteristics differentiating them from the inhabitants of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, to say nothing of Tasmania, very much in the same way as the white citizens of the Southern States in the American Union are differentiated from those in the North. But if between Queenslander and Victorian there are clearly perceptible divergencies of type, how much greater must be those marking off the Queenslander from the Canadian ! It is, indeed, hardly possible to conceive a greater contrast than that which prevails, in respect of those outward conditions of life that may be supposed likely to influence character and world-outlook, between the lots of the average dwellers in the Canadian Dominion and in Queensland respectively. They represent, in fact, the extremes of dissimilarity among the physical and economic circumstances sur- rounding and undoubtedly serving to mould the tempera- ments and points of view of the self-governing citizens of the Empire. And yet it is volunteers from these two Colonies who with equal alacrity travelled from their distant homes to meet in South Africa, and when the moment for action came, threw themselves with equal joyousness and equal effect into the struggle, which in the last resort is being fought to preserve the British Empire and its ideals of equal rights, liberty, and self-government.
Such a fact as this should surely weigh with those Englishmen who still denounce the war in which we are engaged as one prompted on the British side by a spirit of sordid greed and aggression, and directed towards the establishment of a system of oppression over white men designed by Nature never to be subjugated. Is it, we would ask, at all readily con- ceivable that, if the war were of such a character as that, there would be such eager and joyous participation in it, or indeed, any participation at all, by the free
citizens of Canada and Queensland, of the other Aus- tralian Colonies and New Zealand, as well as by the British inhabitants of the South African Colonies imme- diately concerned. Accepting, for the sake of argument, the preposterous suppositions, first, that her Majesty's Government, composed as it is, might have been dragged into a criminal adventure by a statesman dominated by an insensate ambition, and swayed by a ring of un- scrupulous financiers ; and second, that the British inhabitants of Cape Colony and Natal might have been possessed by one mad longing to put the Colonists of Dutch origin under their feet, —what imaginable motive could Canadians or Australasians have for giving any kind of countenance to such an enterprise ? Do Mr. Frederick Greenwood and Mr. Frederic Harrison—strange conjunction of stars!—hold that our fellow-subjects in North America and in the lands washed by the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean are, almost to a man, the victims of some extraordinary obsession which has paralysed alike their political intelligence and their moral sense ? It will not do for them to say that the enthusiasm with which in all the Colonies men are now offering themselves in numbers far larger than have been asked for to join the forces at the front, and the high spirit shown by the volunteers from Canada and Queens. land, from New South Wales and New Zealand, already in the field, are simply to be explained by the ancient instinct of a fighting race for helping those of common blood and language and allegiance who have got into a difficulty. Thank heaven ! that instinct is also illus- trated in splendid fashion. But what the historian will unquestionably recognise as an essential feature in recent events, and ought, therefore, to be taken into account now by every one who desires to form a philosophical view of a great Imperial crisis, is the fact that the present temper and action of all our Colonies, and of their gallant sons already in presence of the grim realities of war, are entirely in harmony with the views and feelings which they entertained from the early days of the acute stage of our dispute with the Transvaal There is no escaping this fact,—that from the outset the citizens of the great self-governing British Colonies in all parts of the world, informed by a free Press of their own, which it has not yet been suggested that South African millionaires had bribed, decided that the continuance of the wrongs of the Outlanders in the Trans- vaal touched the honour and the life of the Empire as a whole, and that if their redress could not be obtained by moral pressure, the whole force of the Empire must be employed to secure it. They early recognised. before the large majority of Englishmen at home had done so, the practical hopelessness of a pacific solution, and if they criticised the conduct of the negotiations at all, it was as not demonstrating more rapidly and unmistakably the purpose of this country to see that equal rights should be established for all white men in all South Africa.
We believe, as we have said, that in future years it will be recognised that the judgment passed on the merits of the South African quarrel by the least, as well as the most, directly interested of our Colonists was in accord with the essential facts of the case. We believe also that the support they are so generously giving now will always be given by the Colonists when, but only when, the Ministers of the British Crown show themselves animated, like the present Government, by a resolute desire to fulfil worthily their great office of trustees for the Empire as a whole. That fact of British solidarity throughout the world, which is now so splendidly illus- trated, affords an assurance of strength in reserve which cannot fail to rouse a sense of exultation even amid the heavy anxieties of the South African situation. But it is devoid of danger to the welfare of the rest of mankind, because of that immense diversity among the interests and points of view of the widely-separated members of the Empire to which we have already referred. Those who direct the policy of the leading partner in this vast commonwealth will be ander no temptation to enter upon dangerous or unscrupulous courses through thinking that the Empire will be behind them. For the Empire, as they will well know, will not be behind them except in the vindication of causes vital to British honour in the highest, or to British interests in the widest, sense. Such causes, as we believe, can never be really at variance with the true welfare of mankind at large. And so in the very nature of the resources now revealed for the practically limitless reinforcement of British power lies, we hold, the most complete security against its abuse, either in South Africa at the end of the present war, or at any future time.
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