UNITY IN THE EMPIRE

By F. J. Chamberlain, C.B.E.

The word "unity" in relation to the Empire has a deeper meaning to-day than it had five years ago. Then it was a watchword, a theme for Imperial conferences and for speakers at demonstrations. The sanguine were sure, the pessimists and that great body of Britishers of moderate views and moderate faith regarded it as one of the things hoped for.

With dramatic suddenness the event clarified the situation, England awoke at war. There was no time for preliminary councils. The supreme test of the Empire had been reached. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole world watched with eagerness for the result. It was in that moment that the great discovery was made. The British Empire stood fast. From that day until now, from end to end of the world has been seen an object lesson of unity that has justified the sanguine, and been an inspiration to the Allies. That revelation has been more inspiring because the world is aware that it is in spite of the most sinister and subtle campaign against it, planned and brilliantly executed by an enemy under the cloak of friendship. I do not forget the tragic circumstances of one small nation within the Empire. But Ireland has given more evidence of her faithfulness to Empire on the fields of France and Flanders than of her treachery at home, and to-day we have more reason to count her ours than has the enemy. Examine the position in cold blood, if you can, and you are still aware of a substantial, solid, and effective unity running round the Empire, binding it in one as with a girdle of scarlet and gold.

The war is not responsible for the unity; it has only discovered or uncovered it. The storm does not establish foundations; it may reveal them. A century of building has created the structure that the storm has failed to destroy.

The British Empire is a successful experiment on the lines of the longed-for League of Nations. The race contains no more diverse elements than are found within its borders; one-third of the land surface of the world, and one-fifth of the inhabitants, have been held together in a living federation and have been kept until this day. Upon our generation rests the awful and splendid responsibility of proving to a questioning world that this unity can be made permanent, and of illustrating how a still larger unity may be achieved.

You will forgive one or two homely pictures of our unity that cannot fail to strike the imagination. It has been our privilege to meet thousands of men from the Overseas Dominions. How many times have boys, whose forefathers emigrated from England or Scotland, who were themselves born in Australia, or on the Western plains of Canada, said, "I have been wanting to come home all my life"? These islands are the "home" of the Empire, and there is no more wonderful word in the language.

Or think of Botha and Smuts, within the memory almost of the youngest of us, fighting with all their heart and mind against the Empire, and, to-day, dominant personalities proclaiming their loyalty, and proving it in unrivalled service.

Or picture, if you can, young India, pouring out her life-blood with pride and ready sacrifice, in France, in Egypt, and in Mesopotamia, for the "British Raj." The most moving scene in the history of the British Commons was on that evening in 1915, when the princes of India stood amidst the representatives of the people of the homelands and paid their homage.

How much such things mean will depend on the vision of those who hear them; but they have in them the stuff that holds the future.

This ghastly war, not of our choosing, has transferred the seats of learning for young Britain from their peaceful sites to the battlefield. If the object of education is the cultivation of the power of thought and observation, the kindling of imagination, and the extension of knowledge; then "over there" is a University set in full array, with ghostly as well as human tutors, a curriculum without precedent, and such a body of undergraduates as Cambridge or Oxford might covet.

It is not for nothing, as regards the Empire, that your sons, the children of the East End, and the boys of Canada, Australasia, and South Africa, are meeting and mingling with Gurkha and Sikh, and with each other. They are sharing a common discipline, a common adventure, making sacrifice together. They are seeing each other with eyes from which the scales are falling, and knowledge and understanding are growing out of their contact. The farthest reaches of Empire have been brought nearer to the Empire's heart by this brotherhood in arms, and the barriers between classes have been lowered until a man can step across them without climbing. The distance between East and West has been immeasurably shortened, whether we are thinking in terms of London, or of the Empire.

In our consideration of this whole subject we are to take the Christian standpoint. To us, the words "Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven," on Divine lips were more than a pious wish. They were a great intention, the expression of age-long purpose. We believe that the gains of the centuries—the harvest of the past which is worth conserving—have been secured by moral and spiritual conquest, rather than by military or political achievement. There may be elements in our present forms of unity which we may well allow to go by the board. The things that make for permanence will abide not only with an enlightened statesmanship, but with a growing understanding, an ever broadening interpretation of Christian teaching about

leading the nation to see that the knowledge of God and of His Christ is the rightful inheritance of every son of the Empire.

As these great ideals of social life have been interpreted in the life of either sovereign peoples or subject peoples, so, we believe, and only so, have bonds been forged that can be trusted to stand the strain which time and changing condition and circumstances impose.

Unity, even the Empire itself ultimately, depends, as we believe, on a broad-based statesmanship, carrying up the main principles of our Government to their highest power in action, and, constantly throughout the Empire, mediating those doctrines to the peoples concerned as they are able to bear them, with ever-extending inspiration and encouragement to growth and development.

Our Imperial aims are neither antagonistic to nor inconsistent with our Christian programme. That should constitute a challenge to the Christian Churches, and is in itself a matter for high and solemn pride. The war has cleared the air. As stated during this period, the ideal of a federation of nations, free, independent, and at the same time interdependent, each working out its national destiny, each contributing, in terms of opportunity, to the well-being of the whole, bringing to bear on Imperial matters the heart, brain, will of the whole, gives us a picture of a Commonwealth in advance of any contemporary political programme, with the one conspicuous exception of that of the United States of America, between whom and ourselves is being established a Unity which may well be more valuable to the world at large and to ourselves than any formal Union.

Here, as we see it, is our opportunity. The Christian forces of the Empire have the onus of maintaining the national outlook at this high level. Our faith, our audacity, our leadership will be needed if lesser counsels are to have no chance of prevailing. There must be no swing of the pendulum back to smaller views.

With the coming of Peace, the temptation to the Nation to take off its armour, to come down from the pedestal, to revert to pre-war conditions, to re-act in self-indulgence from the strain of war, or to let materialism defeat idealism, will be well-nigh overwhelming. To give way to that temptation will be to rob victory of any permanent values. It will be a poor thing to have taught Germany her lesson, if we fail to learn our own.

We see no hope of successful resistance of that temptation apart from the mobilisation of the Christian forces within the Empire into an army committed to the sacred task of making the conscience of the Nation effectively Christian, leading the way in bringing about a closer approximation between the politics of the State and the programme of the Kingdom of God, and proclaiming that Kingdom at hand.

If we are agreed so far it behoves us to look for the practical implications of the position. These islands are still the heart and home of the Empire. This was the rock whence its younger peoples were hewn. Our nation has produced the men and the machinery that govern our commonwealth. The lonely places, farthest removed from us, will be peopled largely by and through the work of children of the Old Country. There, wherever her children go, is England.

England is a treasure house, where the very stones are eloquent. Her history, her buildings, her national and civic life, her denominations and movements are all of them of vital interest to her children. It is a place of pilgrimage and remembrance. It is more. They find here the mature growths from which their institutions have sprung. They love our historic places, they love our crowded cities, they love our seashores and our quiet country-side, for everywhere they go they find not only the story of our past, but that of their own. This is their spiritual home. Our art, our literature, our movements are parts of a common inheritance, and it is the pride of the Motherland that her children have never outgrown their love of the old home, their veneration for its sanctions and restraints, and that on their own homesteads they have reproduced in new settings and often in fresh forms so much that is native here.

One would like to see a larger share in this priceless inheritance offered to our peoples oversea. Think for one moment of our great Cathedrals, unique and wonderful. They can never be reproduced. They might be copied; but Canterbury and Westminster, Lincoln and Durham, York and the rest would still remain all that they are to us and to them. You cannot transplant history. In the homeland we are but trustees of these treasures, and we ought to make them the home and centre of our Imperial Christianity. In every one of them the priests of the Church in the Overseas lands should not only be seen but heard. Is there no room in Cathedral Chapters for Overseas representatives, so that in our daily services in a new and living way we may be linked together in sacrament, praise and prayer, and in the proclamation of Christian truth? One Canonry for each historic building would mean more to Unity than many resolutions at Congress. Perhaps that is as far as one ought to go in suggestion, but there are other splendid possibilities that one would love to discuss. No one thinking of Unity in the Empire can fail to rejoice in the growing desire manifest among Christian Denominations for Unity. I will not trench on another's subject beyond saying that the way to Union is Unity, and that it would be tragic if in these momentous days any stone was left unturned that would lead to better knowledge, deeper understanding and sympathy between those who name the Name that is above every name. And our people overseas have much to teach us in this matter. Over great areas of social opportunity and service the Catholic Church may act unitedly and must do so, if she is to enter on offensive warfare and not stand for another generation on the defensive. The war has made a difference here. Men, who in the conventional days of peace rarely met, have joined hands in service. Catholic and Protestant, Churchman and Free Churchman, have found joy in fellowship. That does not mean that differences have disappeared, it means that, recognising and estimating their differences, it has been possible to establish a basis of co-operation, in knowledge, understanding, and sympathy, and to recognise in one another the hall-mark of Christian faith and character. Is this to be a war measure only? or is it to be one of the great gains to be carried over into the days ahead?

One other question clamours for treatment: the problem of the evangelisation of the Empire. Christianity must be given its chance in every corner of the Empire. There may be divergent opinions as to the methods to be used, but if Christianity contains in its gospel the pearl of great price, there can be no two opinions as to the obligation that rests on us to bring to the nations federated with us this supreme gift. Nothing can release us from that responsibility. To postpone the presentation of the Christian gospel for any of the time-honoured excuses:

(1) our pre-occupation in matters of more urgent importance elsewhere,

(2) any fear of the effects of Christianity on our political or commercial interests,

(3) the desire to live down prejudice and establish confidence,

(4) the preparation of a people's mind by education before introducing a new religion,

—any one of these is treachery to the All-Father and to the family of man, and a vital praeparatio evangelica is being made. Let me illustrate.

It happened in a great marquee in France. On a summer evening in 1916 the place was crowded with Indians. There was a group playing Indian card games, there was a crowd round a gramophone with Indian records, at the writing tables with great torment of spirit men were writing to their homes. At the counter foods they loved were being provided. Against one of the poles of the marquee stood a stately Indian of some rank. He had been seen there often before. He rarely spoke but seemed intensely interested. On this particular night the time arrived for the closing of the tent. The little groups gradually disappeared and the tent curtains were being replaced when the leader of the work found himself addressed by the Indian:

Why do you serve us in this way? You are not here by Government orders. You come when you like and you go when you like. There is only one religion on earth that would lead its servants to serve in this way, Christianity. I have been watching you men, and I have come to the conclusion that Christianity will fit the East as it can never fit the West. When the war is over I want you to send one of your men to my village. We are all Hindus, but my people will do what I tell them.

One of the ghastly tragedies of the war is that two great nations nominally Christian are at each other's throats. In the world's eyes Christian civilisation has broken down. We know better, but our explanations will not carry far enough to correct the impression. Our defence must be an offensive.

It is certainly within the truth to say that we have not yet seen what Christianity can do for a community or a nation where, as I put it before, "it is given a chance." May it not be that in the Providence of God the first great revelation of what Christianity can do for a nation will be seen in one of the lands that have come under the Flag, and among a people living under less complex conditions than ourselves? If that is a possibility we ought to see that wherever the Flag flies, there comes, with the unfurling of the Flag, the Gospel of Christ.

This is directly in the interest of unity, and many problems that have so far remained insoluble to our statesmen might discover the solution in Christian leadership.

I shall be pardoned I know for suggesting that the highest purposes of unity may be served by the extension and development throughout the Empire of such international organisations as the Student Christian Movement, the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A., and, used at its highest values, the Boy Scout Movement. There are others, but these are typical. They are established movements built up on definite principles capable of universal application, and yet each of them able to develop its organisation on lines that recognise national psychology and character. Each of them may become and aims at becoming indigenous everywhere, giving freedom of method and action and free play to the moral and intellectual activities of the people concerned, while they have certain essential elements that are universally characteristic of them. In addition, they give large numbers of Christian people an opportunity of expressing their unity in service of the right kind.

What was said about the Cathedrals is equally true of our two ancient Universities. Mr Fisher's Education Bill may well mean more for Imperial unity than almost any other single factor. It will mean an ever increasing number of men to whom "Cambridge" and "Oxford" will be magic words. If our view of culture is broad enough we shall see to it that these two Universities become increasingly places where the children of the Empire who are fit to graduate in them shall not lack the opportunity of doing so. Because these ancient foundations link with the past, because of all they may mean to the present and to the future, the way to them should be made broad enough to admit the living stream of Greater Britain's children, who by dint of gifts and industry have proved their fitness to meet their peers in these delectable cities, where the very air breathes the romance of British culture. Their right of entry ought not to be won by the benefactions of private citizens, though all who love knowledge are grateful enough for these, but should be theirs by their citizenship in the Empire and their own tested fitness.

Nothing again is more hopeful in the present situation than the manifest desire, widely felt and expressed, that the old class-antagonisms should never be revived. Surely this is the strategic moment in which we may make the War once more contribute to a better state of things. Our politicians are awake to the need and are inventing every kind of machinery for bringing Capital and Labour together in Council Chambers as co-partners in the Commerce of the Empire. But there are sinister forces also at work, and this machinery can only run if it is controlled by men of resolute good will.

The War has been a great bridge-builder linking up in the fellowship of discipline and sacrifice people between whom chasms yawned before. There are knowledge and understanding and sympathy to-day amongst us. Yet many of us are convinced that no purely political machinery can be made effective in achieving so great a task as the making permanent of this new and better condition. We need a new and abiding spirit of conciliation, a deeper determination than political action can produce, that things shall not relapse, that the forces of re-action shall not triumph. The one hope of carrying over into permanence this new understanding and appreciation lies in the nation becoming impregnated with those spacious spiritual ideals that the Churches together represent. Nothing is impossible to faith, and faith in God and man will be kept astretch in the discipline that will be demanded of us all, in the breaking down of false barriers that have grown up through the years and the destruction of long-lived prejudices that will die hard.

The Empire itself is a unity. It is not easy for English people to realise all that is implied here. My great name-sake urged us in this country to "think Imperially." Another voice asks us "What do they know of England who only England know?" but it is hard for us to think except in terms of England. For example, I have referred to this country as the great treasure house of the Empire's history, and to the care and devotion shewn by our kinsmen from Overseas in their study of our country and its institutions. All of us realise how right that is, but ought we not to reciprocate their devotion and regard, by much more intense interest and study of their life and the developments of their institutions?

Our unity demands this wider culture, this reciprocity. The Motherland must not only teach, she must be prepared to learn. She may lead, but she must be prepared to follow. We have much to contribute, but in Religion, in political and social ideals, and in commerce there is much we need to receive.

If our land is the great treasure house, are not these other lands great laboratories where we might see, if we would only look, how some of our accepted ideas, and notions, and watchwords are tested in a larger arena?

Are we so sure of ourselves that we are prepared to hold on to our own experience as the final test of the truth and value of our theories? Or are we big enough in the light of Imperial experience to revise our judgment, to sift our theories, and to go forward carrying those which stand the test of the wider arena, and being prepared to surrender those which only seemed right and proper in the conventional setting of these small islands?

In conclusion, the Empire has come to power and unity on certain great principles. Our Imperial ideals have been evolved out of experience all over the world, and with all kinds of people, under the guidance of distinguished leaders of many-sided gifts. In an Empire so diverse in its constituent parts, including peoples at varied stages of development, it is impossible that those ideals should be everywhere expressed at their highest power. In many places our methods of government must be tentative, but everywhere they must be progressive, placing upon subject peoples the burden of government as rapidly as they are able to bear it, providing every inspiration that can call them upwards and onwards. Our tentative methods must never be allowed to become permanent. We may be tutors, we must never become tyrants. We may lead, direct, even control, but we may never be content until our people are free, self-governing, rejoicing in the liberty that enables them to choose whole-heartedly to remain in that Commonwealth of free peoples we call the Empire. Along this path lie permanence and closer unity. In our Imperial destiny it is the part of those who would be the greatest to become the servants of all.

Thank God for all who have laboured in this spirit to build our goodly heritage.