Imperial Commonwlalth

THIS unusual book, at once readable and speculative, not only rehearses the iridescent story of the British Empire; it dives deep below the surface and touches the springs of history. What trenchant and compelling reason drove eighty thousand Englishmen, even before the wars of Roundhead and Cavalier, to a hazard of new fortunes in the American Wilderness? Was it some half-understood purpose, some obscure sense of duty or destiny, which, within three centuries, spread English Colonists over half the world? Was it England or Accident which created an Empire greater far than Rome’s? How came it that a medley of heroes and adventurers, traders and convicts, seekers after a hundred per cent profit, and penniless ne’er-do-weels, combined to create the pattern of a new and free world? Strangest of all, how did Imperialism beget its alien child, Democracy? Without answers to these questions, there is little of the modern world that we can understand. Lord Elton is ready with sympathetic but candid replies.

Imperialism is a tattered word. Within my own lifetime it has tickled American ears. Now abuse is heaped upon it and its glory is become a stigma. Yet there is no doubt white men once took up their burden in a spirit we no longer wish to understand. Bravely they bore it, terrible were their mistakes, magnificent their successes. Now that the Books of Reckoning are closing and the balance is being cast, the totals can be fairly added. Carp and criticize as you will, the net profits won by Imperialism for civilization are enormous. Lord Elton runs his finger over them and fixes them in our memory.

When we think of Imperialism we should realize that not until the Indian Mutiny did the word take on its modern significance. Before that revolt (it was a mutiny, remember, not a revolution), Imperialism simply meant Caesarism in the antique sense quite with the weight and moment of the modern word. Hitherto haphazard and unplanned, the Empire suddenly became self-conscious, and began consistently to integrate itself into a vast imperial scheme. And straightway at the zenith of its power, it sowed the seeds certain to transform it from Empire to Democracy. Education was systematized. Self-rule was sedulously inculcated. Equality was preached and even practiced.

It is instructive to compare British policy with French. So far as colonies are concerned égalité is social, never political. Says the Frenchman to the native: “You may join my club, but it is I who am qualified to govern.” But to his colonist the Englishman says: “We shall dine separately but government belongs to both of us and one day it shall be all yours.”

Imperialism dates from the birthday of modern history. Columbus created it when he discovered a new world. When the thrifty Henry VII, in his excitement over the safe arrival of the Mathew in Bristol harbor, presented John Cabot with all of ten pounds, he called the tune, and the British have been paying the Piper for it ever since. The gains have been enormous but the Piper has been paid in full. England has watched her little island grow smaller and smaller still in comparison with those vast territories where under their alien names Englishmen still live. For three centuries and more Empire has been seized and held in the sovereign’s name. Now, in the chill official language of Imperial Conference, these lands

. . . are autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

It is a story without a parallel.

Lord Elton is a Labor Peer. Scratch a British Socialist these days and the blood of Empire still shows red. Imperialism has a Tory lineage. Burleigh, Bolingbroke, Pitt, Disraeli, Churchill; the descent is straight and unmistakable. The pride and responsibility of it still endure, for Empire is a people’s heritage.

ELLERY SEDGWICK