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ON THE WORLD TODAY

IT is time for American political commentators to make up their minds about the British Empire. Many of them have long been demanding that Britain give India her freedom. They have been asking pointedly what British troops are doing in places like Egypt. They have been pillorying the white man’s “poona mentality” in the colonies. Some are still talking as if a Dominion were a colony. The Dominions are free states joined in a voluntary association under the Crown, with the right to secede from the Empire whenever they wish.

The British Labor Government has now told India that after more than one hundred and fifty years of subserviency she can have complete independence. This is by far the most important decision the Labor regime has yet taken.

Prime Minister Attlee has also offered to withdraw British troops from Egypt, where they have been stationed for sixty-four years. The colonies are being advanced more rapidly than ever towards selfgovernment; and during the transition, a high priority is being given to education, medical services, and social and economic betterment.

Yet American commentators who denounced the survival of Victorian imperialism are now gloating over what they describe as “the Empire in retreat.” Is it the poor memory of the American public on which these critics are relying when one day they cry, “Quit India,” and the next day, after Britain has offered to withdraw, declare, “We told you so. The British are scuttling the Empire.” Are they blind to the meaning of the changes occurring before their eyes? Or is it just that any old stick is good enough to thump the lion’s rump?

This is not to say that, in less than one year of Labor Government, Britain has shed all the evils of imperialism. Black spots remain in the colonies and elsewhere. But the conscience of the present British government is alive to them and there is a will to do something about them.

Honest American critics must draw a distinction between the Labor Government’s more progressive policy inside the Commonwealth and its lagging, standpat attitude in certain fields of foreign policy — towards Royalist Greece and Fascist Spain, for example. One can reasonably criticize the reactionary and snobbish men who pervade the diplomatic service and yet acknowledge the difference between the old and the new in British imperial policy.

Mr. Churchill’s little stick

In any event, necessity has caught up with and passed righteousness. The plain truth is that Britain today lacks the manpower and money, even if she had the will, to police a large segment of the planet. The imperialistic attitude of Winston Churchill and of the Conservative Party, of which he is the leader, in attacking Labor’s policy towards India and Egypt, not only fails to express the national feeling but is no longer practical. It is beyond the deftness of the slickest Tory conjurer to transform a wagging finger into a club.

British Labor has always believed in the Commonwealth. It has never been a “little England" party. No less than the Conservatives it appreciates the life or death importance of the Empire to British foreign trade. In the first quarter of 1946, roughly one half of Britain’s exports still went to the Commonwealth and British possessions. South Africa, India, and Australia remain Britain’s largest markets. The Commonwealth is Britain’s equivalent of the immense land masses, free of tariff restrictions, which the United States and the Soviet Union possess.

Those who deny decent impulses behind Labor’s approach to India and Egypt might ask themselves whether the new departure is not wiser than the old studies’ alternative. Are British interests more likely to be uprooted in India and Egypt if those countries are free and friendly or if they are subjugated and surly?

Many are saying, “The nationalist movements are tidal waves and the British would have been swept out anyway, wouldn’t they?” That is true. But is it immaterial for the future whether the British quit India and Egypt with good grace or are booted out? The “if” may be prejudged, but the “how” is vastly important.

The struggle for world power

To say that Attlee’s Cabinet favors self-government and better economic and social conditions and is against camouflaged slave labor among the semidependencies and colonies is not to deny the large factor of self-interest in Labor’s Empire policy. Commercially Britain hopes to gain by this enlightened method.

The Labor Government is outspoken also in calculating British strategic advantages. What Russia may do colors Britain’s attitude toward India as well as every other aspect of British overseas policy. It is also a consideration for most Indian leaders.

The Red Army could drive across Afghanistan to India’s Northwest Frontier Province. Extension of Soviet influence through Persian Azerbaijan into Teheran is causing concern not only to Britain but also to Indian Social Democrats like Nehru — and much more to India’s big financiers, the steel, cotton, and jute millionaires who stand in the right wing of the Congress Party. Soviet moves towards the Persian Gulf are upsetting to the wealthier Indian industrialists and bankers and to the princes.

The British government has declared candidly that military reckoning is the most powerful single factor prompting the British rejection of the Indian Moslems’ demand for a separate state (Pakistan) and leading to the British “award” of a united federal India. The Indian Army is today the fourthstrongest in the world, inferior only to the American, Soviet, and British Armies. Its twenty-five divisions are well armed and mechanized.

It is Britain’s intention to conclude with India and Egypt alliances under which both those countries will maintain airfields, keep in good shape their military and naval stores and installations, and engage British officers to train their national forces. The new treaties will provide for mutual assistance so that in war the British could use Indian and Egyptian bases.

The potential adversary in these British reckonings is not hard to guess. Answering Tory critics in the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Bevin said, “I will be no party to leaving a vacuum in Egypt.” This sentence would have been more complete if Bevin had declared that he would never leave a Middle Eastern vacuum into which Soviet power would seep.

Where will security be found?

There is a sharp difference between the Labor and the Tory method of looking after the Empire’s security. Churchill insists that Britain ought to keep her garrison in the Suez zone and make Egypt sign on the dotted line. He further declares that the Labor Government misplayed its hand by entering the Cairo negotiations with an offer to withdraw all British forces from Egypt instead of using partial evacuation as a bargaining chip in an Oriental poker game.

Instead of such a transparent attempt to renew the British protectorate, the Labor Cabinet preferred to open the Cairo discussions with a practical gesture of friendship to the Egyptians by recognizing Egypt’s status as a sovereign state.

Criticized by Churchill for sending Viscount Stansgate, Labor’s Air Minister, as head of the British Delegation to Cairo, Bevin replied, “ It is better that a friend should go to Egypt than a gentleman with spurs.” Churchill said, “Gratitude is the only sentiment becoming to the government of Egypt.”

The Dominions decide

Britain is a little disappointed at her failure to achieve closer collaboration with the Dominions when Dominion ministers met Prime Minister Attlee in London. Defense in the Pacific was the most important topic, and in this matter Britain suffered a setback. She had proposed a Joint Chiefs of Staff committee for the whole Commonwealth, but the Dominions said no to any such centralization.

Another British suggestion was received more sympathetically. Plans are to be considered for building munitions industries in Australia. These would be available, with existing engineering and aircraft plants in Canada, if a few atomic bombs were to blow British production to shreds in a future war.

But where are the skilled workers and funds to be found to industrialize Australia? Britain can ill afford to let any of her technically trained workmen and engineers emigrate to Australia for this purpose. So the transformation of Australia into a great munitions factory will have to wait.

The conference of Dominion leaders illuminated the difference in Britain’s relations with each Do-