ON THE EMPIRE

EMPIRE DAY MESSAGE, 1925

Twenty years ago Empire Day was first celebrated throughout His Majesty's Dominions. Twenty years hence the Prime Minister of Great Britain may be able to make his voice heard, not only—as I am to-day—to listeners in the home country, but to men, women and children in all parts of the Empire. We, too, in Great Britain may listen to Empire Day messages spoken by the Dominion Prime Ministers and by leaders of the Crown Colonies and the Dependencies. Such a consummation of scientific progress makes a strong appeal to the imagination. The direct interchange of speech would bring home to every dweller under the Flag a vivid sense of the unity of the British Empire. Yet, to my mind, the existence of that unity to-day, and in all past days since the foundations of our Empire were laid, is a far more impressive phenomenon.

Our Empire grew from the adventurous spirit of our fathers. They went forth, urged by the love of adventure, by the passion for discovery, by the desire for a freer life in new countries. Wherever they went, they carried with them the traditions, the habits, the ideals of their Mother Country. Wherever they settled they planted a new homeland. And though mountains and the waste of seas divided them, they never lost that golden thread of the spirit which drew their thoughts back to the land of their birth. Even their children, and their children's children, to whom Great Britain was no more than a name, a vision, spoke of it always as Home. In this sense of kinship, the Empire finds its brightest glory and its most essential strength. The Empires of old were created by military conquest and sustained by military domination. They were Empires of subject races governed by a central power. Our Empire is so different from these that we must give the word Empire a new meaning, or use instead of it the title of Commonwealth of British Nations. The great Dominions are free self-governing States; in their freedom they render unshakeable allegiance to the Throne. The ties that bind them to each other and to us are, in the eloquent words of Burke, "light as air, but strong as links of iron." Each is a daughter in her mother's house, and mistress in her own.

We British are supposed to be a dull, unimaginative race. But I am sure that none among us can think upon this Commonwealth of British nations, which men and women of our own race have created, without a stirring of our deepest feelings. If anyone should ask for proof that the unity of the Empire is a reality, let him cast his mind back to the hour when the living structure of Empire was put to the supreme test. When war came the response of the Empire was instant, spontaneous and whole-hearted. You and I can never forget how our hearts were uplifted by the messages which came, in those critical days of August 1914, from the great Dominions; and not only from them, but also from India and the Colonies which were still under our rule. The Empire came through the ordeal of a long and exhausting war, strengthened, confirmed in its loyalty.

To-day our minds are engrossed with the problems of restoration after war. What brighter hope have we, in the solution of these formidable problems, than our intimate union with countries of great achievement and still greater potentialities? These are not times when we can afford to belittle the material side of partnership in Empire. If we, in these crowded industrial islands, can serve the interests of newer countries; and if they, in turn, with their fertile spaces and unlimited natural resources, can serve our interests, we are more than justified in making common cause with them in repairing the waste of war. This sense of a common purpose, this desire for mutual aid, gives a practical touch to the ideal of Empire as a family of nations. When each member of the family seeks to give its aid, freely, ungrudgingly, for the good of all, the fabric of the Commonwealth is more and more closely knit.

It is the task of statesmen in this country and throughout the Empire to devise the ways and means by which the progress of the British family may be directed and encouraged. Each one of us, from the highest to the lowest, has nevertheless an individual share in this great responsibility. The Empire is not only our master hope; it is our greatest heritage, the widest opportunity for patriotic service. It is something infinitely precious which we hold in trust from our forefathers and for our children. To be worthy of that trust, we cannot be merely passive admirers of its achievement and its promise. We must all, in our several degrees, be active learners in the school of Empire. Over and over again our friends from overseas complain of the ignorance displayed by people at home regarding the Dominions, Colonies, and Dependencies. I think that our ardent and friendly critics are inclined to overlook the difficulty which our busy folk experience in gathering clear and comprehensive knowledge of all parts of the Empire. It is no little task for people to know all that goes on in our great Dominions, to understand the problems confronting our Crown Colonies, and to enter into the life of the Indian Empire and the Dependencies, where a handful of our countrymen labour for the benefit of millions of native races in all stages of culture. But the difficulty of the duty is no reason why we should neglect it. Rather is it a stimulus to exert ourselves to widen our knowledge of the countries and the nations which share with us in the obligations of Empire.

I feel sure, however, that since the opening of the Empire Exhibition at Wembley last year, this affectionate grumble from our brothers overseas has lost much of its point. The Exhibition enabled, and still enables, our people to learn in a few days much which could not otherwise be appreciated save by a tour of the Empire. No one can adequately measure the value of such a demonstration of the arts and industries of the Commonwealth of British nations. In more than one sense the Empire came home to us at Wembley. There are many ways, apart from such exhibitions, by which we can study our Empire at second hand. But nothing, to my mind, can prove so enlightening as personal visits overseas, and personal intercourse with dwellers in our Dominions and Colonies. We are accustomed to look upon the oceans as dividing us from our brothers and sisters in the Imperial family. I prefer to regard the seas as highways which unite us. The progress of communication has made it possible for us to visit Canada, South Africa, Egypt, the West Indies, and other portions of the Empire with less trouble and expense than our fathers incurred in making their Continental tours. It should be the ambition of all of us to pay at least one visit, however brief, to Britain overseas.

Apart from that, we can do something to foster the interchange of visits for educative ends. The Empire Parliamentary Association has done invaluable work in bringing together legislators from different parts of the Empire. Recently a number of Australian school children visited Great Britain, and public interest was awakened to the value of similar visits by our children to the Dominions. All such movements deserve the fullest encouragement.

Empire Day affords us an opportunity for joining with other parts of the Empire in expressing our common pride in our Imperial heritage, and our common determination to build worthily upon the foundations which the great Empire-builders so well and truly laid. If I were to attempt to crystallise its message in a phrase, I might take the words, "Know Thyself," in which the ancients expressed the duty of the individual man, and widen it to embrace the duty of the British citizen of to-day—"Know Your Empire."

DEMOCRACY AND THE EMPIRE

FROM A SPEECH TO THE JUNIOR IMPERIAL LEAGUE

3rd May, 1924

Your generosity in your reception of me to-night is no less than the generosity which you showed me when, immediately after defeat in the country, and before my leadership had been ratified by the party in London, you asked me to come here to-night as your guest. You are, indeed, the friends that I would have—friends in bad times as well as in good, and we shall see the good times together. I think I will begin by saying a few words to you following on something that I said yesterday in the Albert Hall, because by your very presence here you show your keenness, you show your desire to do something for your party and for the country, and I want to say something, if I can, that may be of help to you in the work that you have to do.

I spoke about the difficulty of a democracy keeping an Empire. Now, democracy is a word often used very loosely, but it is really only a certain form of government, and it is the form of government which exists in our country to-day. I think it is very important for all those who are entering on politics and the study of politics to realise, as I have said before on other occasions, that there is very little difference in space between tyrannies, autocratic governments, popular governments, complete democracies like our own, and governments of licence and anarchy. In other words, you may represent the forms of government which mankind have tried as lying round the circumference of a wheel with tyranny at the top, and working round, as I have described, to anarchy, which inevitably leads back once more to tyranny; and human governments are always moving imperceptibly in that course. From that fact it has been truly said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance; and that is what you have to exercise, to maintain your liberty on the one hand that we may never slip back into tyranny, and to guard that liberty with your lives, if need be, against that licence that leads to anarchy and to unreason, which inevitably, after having destroyed the Empire, would come back to tyranny for its life.

Democracy is the most difficult form of government, and therefore the more worthy of our giving our lives to make it a success. Let us remember that many kings have been ruined by the tongues of well-meaning courtiers. Let our statesmen take care that our people are never ruined by the tongues of able and inspiring friends of democracy. Democracy is no new thing. More than two thousand years ago, in one of the most famous democracies that ever existed, a very great poet, in a play, put these words into the mouth of one of his political characters: "If two orators proposed, one to build ships of war, and the other to increase official salaries, the salaries-man would beat the ships-of-war-man in a canter." Within a generation of the day on which those words were written, that democracy, whose power was based on the sea, perished.

In the British House of Commons there have been found members who have voted, within the last few weeks, both against the construction of new cruisers and in favour of free railway passes. There is nothing new under the sun, and there is nothing that I have ever heard or read of that can be uttered by the extremest of our opponents in any party in their attempt to catch votes that has not already been said in the plays of Aristophanes. Now the instances to which I alluded yesterday as showing incapacity to take a long view, which is so often the great weakness of leaders of a democracy—that incapacity has been shown in the last few days by the decision of the Government in the case of Singapore, and in the case to which Lord Plymouth alluded of certain items of preference with the Dominions. It is a want of imagination and the fear of taking the risk of what could only be a temporary and a local unpopularity, but it is that very cowardice that, in the long run, does so much harm to this form of government. A good motive to my mind can hardly be a sufficient excuse for an act of unwisdom.

Now you here show by your very title that you care sufficiently for your ideals to make sacrifices for them, and to try to induce other people to make sacrifices too. You are not afraid of the word "Empire." I know that there are people who dislike it. They think that it has a militaristic tinge. We may call it a Commonwealth of Nations, a fine title, if we will, but let us remember that the Empire, as we know it, is different from any that has existed hitherto; for it has not been the creation of conquering armies, although armies have played their part, but our Empire arose from the bone and sinew of our people. It was in the first place commercial adventurers who won our Indian Empire, and how much of our Dominions has not been called into being by men and women who, for reasons of conscience, or desire to find a country in which they could lead a wider, freer life, left our shores voluntarily in a high spirit of adventure? Thus were the beginnings of our Empire created of our own people and by our own people. And that is why it is our work, and the work of our own people of all classes, to see that that heritage is preserved.

Study these things for yourselves. Learn the history, talk to your friends from the Dominions, and get so lively a sense of what it stands for that you can talk to others about them and teach the real meaning of these great things. Many years ago no task could have seemed more impossible than the creation of a United States; yet the strength and perseverance of the settlers in that country, and the discoveries subsequently made, enabled them to bring into a United Empire or Commonwealth that great country with its three thousand miles' width of territory and with its varied climates. Some day it may well be that our dream may come true of an Empire whose ways are the great waterways of the world, and in which men shall move for their industry and for their homes from end to end with as little concern as to-day they move from the State of New York to that of California. These ideals have long been among the most cherished ideals of our party. We have attempted to teach the people what we believe would lead to the more speedy fruition of them. We have not yet wholly succeeded, but you have joined yourselves to us although you know that at times we have failed, bringing to us a new enthusiasm of youth and confidence that will carry everything before it.

* * * * * * * *

There is only one more subject on which I should like to say a few words, because it is one that I refer to nearly every time I speak, and by this time those who criticise my methods would call them platitudes. Platitudes they may be, but I am going on repeating them until they have some effect. I think it was Sir William Harcourt who said that you had to repeat a thing a dozen times before anyone took any notice. I shall be proud to follow the example of so distinguished a Liberal statesman. I want to speak on one aspect of peace in industry. Now much has been written, and much has been said on that subject. I will only touch on one point. I am convinced, and I am not without experience, that one of the chief things we want is more knowledge and more light—knowledge on the part of each party of the position of the other. Now, to a certain extent, that is not difficult to get. What is difficult to get, and what is of vital importance, is that the men should have knowledge about the industries in which, and for which, they work. What commended to me the miners' agreement was that there you have, in an agreement in one of the greatest trades of the country, that which gives you to a considerable extent what I have always wanted.

Let that example continue and flourish, and let it be modified wherever modifications may be found desirable in practice, but let us see that kind of knowledge made familiar throughout the great industries of the country. The men want to know for their own sakes just these points: something about costs, where the goods they make have to be sold, and in competition with whom they have to be sold, and the conditions under which those goods are produced, where they are produced in competition, and the wages paid. They should also have some knowledge of the amount a business should set aside to meet its repairs and its reserves, and when they have that knowledge they will then know when is the time that they may hope to improve their own condition, they will know then what the imponderables (as they have been called) are, and they can realise, in a way they cannot now, whether or not those who were arguing against them are basing their claims upon facts and are speaking in truth. In other words, it will tend to dissipate that horrible suspicion which causes an atmosphere in which no healthy plant can flourish, and give light and publicity by which alone men can tell whether they are getting a square deal.

Everyone of us here, we hope and believe, by throwing our influence into political life, may do something to better the conditions of our own country. We want to help to better the conditions for our own people. We want to see our people raised, not into a society of State ownership, but into a society in which, increasingly, the individual may become an owner. There is a very famous sentence of Sir Henry Maine's, in which he said that the progress of our civilisation had been of recent centuries a progress on the part of mankind from status to contract. Socialism would bring him back from contract to status.

It is an immense encouragement to me to see a gathering like this—the generosity, the enthusiasm—if we had it through all classes of our party we should be in office for life. You are showing in your youth that you mean to take up the burden, and I say "Good luck to you," for it is the only burden worth taking up. You realise that the State is no cold entity. It is just the sum of all the men and women of our country. If we look at it in that individual way, that it is the men and women of the country we are out to help and to serve, it will lend us enthusiasm. Nothing can help the men and women who compose the State to make the State worthy of this country—nothing can help them more than the kind of service which you are prepared to give—service that will relieve the burden, and service that will make straight the path, never losing in that the sense of the importance of the individual, and the responsibility of each one of us and of all of us to one another and to our Maker.

DISARMAMENT

FROM A SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

23rd July, 1923

Very little, if anything, has been said to-day about one of the greatest difficulties which we find facing us in dealing with this question, and that is that fighting instinct which is part of human nature. I propose to say a few words about that first, with a view to explaining how, in my view, we have to attempt to eradicate it, or, at least, to combat it, so as to produce that will to peace without which all efforts by legislation, arbitration, rule or otherwise, must be vain. That fighting instinct in man is the instinct of the tiger. It dates from his creation, and was probably given to him to enable him to fight for the survival of his species, for the provision of space in which to bring up his race, and to provide food for it; and we find through the ages that that instinct, whether in democracy or empire, or among individuals, has had full play. We find it even among men whose political views can be classed as pacifist, and that is the reason why we have often found in history that men of pacifist views were advocating policies which must end, if carried to their logical conclusion, in war.

I need only remind Hon. Members that there was a considerable agitation some little time ago, with which I personally had great sympathy, and which was conducted very largely by those who, in all other respects, were of a peculiarly pacific turn of mind, and that was that this country—if there is any work to be done in this world, it is always our country, and I am thankful for that—that this country should in some way or other rescue Armenia. The only means by which Armenia could have been rescued was at the point of the sword. I may remind Hon. Members that for the thirty years preceding one of the longest and bloodiest struggles in history, the Civil War in America, the anti-slavery agitation in the North-Eastern States was very largely, if not entirely, in the hands of professional pacifists and anti-militarists, and when the agitation had brought matters to the point that it meant either surrendering the principle of anti-slavery or going to war the pacifists, quite rightly in my view, said: "It shall be war," realising, as was said during the late War, that there are times when moral issues may even triumph over peace.

In the same way some of those to-day who are loudest in their protestations of international pacifism are loudest in their protestations that nothing but a class war can save society. No truer word was ever said by a philosopher than was said by Kant, a century ago or more, that we are civilised to the point of wearisomeness, but before we can be moralised we have a long way to go. It is to moralise the world that we all desire, and I have merely mentioned these innate characteristics of human nature to make us realise, as I think we sometimes fail to do, what difficulties there are before us in carrying out a policy with which everyone in this House is in sympathy. We have to remember one more thing besides that, that since the War we must not make the mistake of thinking that what may be war weariness is necessarily an excess of innate good will; and we cannot help noting that there has arisen in Europe, in the few years since the peace, a strong local feeling in different places of an extreme nationalism which, unless corrected, may bear in what is not of itself an evil thing the seeds of much future peril for the peace and harmony of Europe.

But, taking into full consideration these points, on which I have touched somewhat summarily, I think there are compensations, and I think before I have finished I shall be able to show that the human race is progressing, though slowly, and is full of a conscious, though hardly as yet articulate, desire for further progress in the same direction.

I have often thought, with reference to the late War, that one of the most terrible effects of it—possibly a double effect—has been that it has shown the whole world how thin is the crust of civilisation on which this generation is walking. The realisation of that must have come with an appalling shock to most of us here. But more than that. There is not a man in this House who does not remember the first air raids and the first use of poisoned gas, and the cry that went up from this country. We know how, before the War ended, we were all using both those means of imposing our will upon our enemy. We realise that when men have their backs to the wall they will adopt any means for self-preservation. But there was left behind an uncomfortable feeling in the hearts of millions of men throughout Europe that, whatever had been the result of the War, we had all of us slipped down in our views of what constituted civilisation. We could not help feeling that future wars might provide, with further discoveries in science, a more rapid descent for the human race. There came a feeling, which I know is felt in all quarters of this House, that if our civilisation is to be saved, even at its present level, it behoves all people in all nations to do what they can by joining hands to save what we have, that we may use it as the vantage ground for further progress, rather than run the risk of all of us sliding in the abyss together.

The conscience of the world is not stilled yet, but on the Government side of the House there rests a responsibility which cannot, in the nature of things, be felt by those who sit in opposition. We have to remember that a great deal of what has been said to-day, and if I may use the phrase in all good faith, some of the dreams which have been mentioned to-day are no new thing. We have to remember that in the French wars of Queen Anne's reign there was just the same longing for, and the same dream of, universal peace that so many of us feel to-day. One hundred years ago that same feeling, in different forms, animated many different breasts. Napoleon at St. Helena had dreams too late for him, but dreams of a united Europe with a united congress on the American model, of which he would be the chief and the dictator. At Vienna such dreams were heard of. The Tsar Alexander, a prototype of the late Tsar, whose dreams of peace were shattered only too cruelly, propounded a scheme of Holy Alliance which at that time came to nothing, because he spoke to a world that was not yet ready for it.

We believe that any attempt at this moment to convene an international conference would not only not lead to success, but would lead to the indefinite postponement of any possibility of achieving the ends which we all desire. In my view the moment cannot arise to approach this problem, with any chance of success, until the conditions of Europe with regard to Reparations and the security of frontiers is settled, and I feel that it would be hopeless to expect a definitely favourable answer—to give only two instances; and I do not wish on this occasion to be more explicit—from France, for instance, before she had obtained a settlement of Reparation and security, or from Poland until she could feel that her frontiers were secure against that gigantic and powerful neighbour along her eastern borders.

The first step to be taken is the step that we are taking now. That is, to attempt a settlement of these existing problems of Reparation, and in taking that step I am animated by as ardent a desire that it may lead ultimately, and at no distant date, to the consideration of these questions which we have been discussing to-day, as I am desirous of it leading to a discussion and settlement of those questions which have kept the countries of Europe apart during all the years which have succeeded the Great War. Let us never forget that sometimes in the darkest day the beginnings of better things are not only attempted but successfully achieved. It was in the darkest days of the struggle of the Thirty Years' War that Grotius worked on international law and led to the foundation of that science which, though it has not brought peace to the world, has yet brought into being a code which has helped the world in its peaceful development, and will continue to do so.

It has been during those dark days of the last three or four years that the Washington Conference was held, which has led to a limitation of naval armaments that, until that Conference was held, I am convinced the statesmen of all countries would have considered to have been impossible, impossible even to have been debated, and impossible in its fulfilment. This year, some of the most valuable exploratory work has been done, and is being done, by the League of Nations. The League of Nations has been occupied in considering this very question of disarmament, and the possibility of linking it up with guarantees of security, universal in their application as such guarantees must be: and such a universality is, indeed, a first and absolute essential to make any prospect hopeful of limitation of armaments.

Now, those efforts of the League of Nations are on the point of taking concrete form in the shape of proposed Treaties, which will be submitted to the Governments of Europe for their consideration, probably after the meeting in September of the General Assembly of the League of Nations. I can promise, at least for this Government, and I am certain that the same will be true of all the leading Governments of Europe, that the work that the League of Nations has done, the form in which their work will be presented, will be examined, not only with the sympathy and the interest that such work deserves, but with an earnest desire, at the first moment when it appears to be practicable, that the aims of the League, if not in the exact form in which they have suggested they should be brought about, shall be brought into effect in Europe.

As was well said by the Hon. Member for Preston (Mr. T. Shaw), in the course of his speech, there is one great instrument of peace in this world, and that is the British Empire. It is a great instrument, not only in its size, and its population, and its wealth, but more than ever a great instrument in this, that it is not only an Empire, but it is a large assembly of free nations, not all of the same kin or the same tongue, but animated largely by a common purpose, and all alike equally desirous of seeing extended in every corner of that Empire or Commonwealth those ideas of liberty, and justice, and freedom which we believe are in our hearts, and which we hope to see spread throughout our Empire and throughout the world. In that collection of nations, which now spreads throughout the world, there is something of hope for the human race, because though it may seem a dream, it may yet some day be possible for peoples in so distracted a Continent as Europe to feel there may be something for them to learn from the development, from the union, and from the ideals of our great Empire, and we may possibly be able to show them a better way, which in years to come they may tread, and find the solution that to-day seems so difficult.

As I have tried to explain to the House we cannot see our way to accept this Motion and take immediate steps, believing as we do that such steps would be rather a bar to future progress than a help. Yet I do say this, that when we are sufficiently fortunate, as I pray we may be, to have seen brought about, with our aid, such a settlement in European conditions as I indicated earlier on, then the time will be ripe and we shall be ready to take our part, in so far as we can, whether through such schemes as have been proposed already or through others, in bringing about that limitation of armaments which we believe to be essential for the future progress of civilised mankind. It is an easy thing to say, as many men say to-day, that this country should cut herself adrift from Europe, but we must remember that our island story is told, and that with the advent of the aeroplane we ceased to be an island. Whether we like it or not, we are indissolubly bound to Europe, and we shall have to use, and continue to use, our best endeavours to bring to that Continent that peace in which we and millions of men up and down Europe have an equal belief and an equal faith.