CORRESPONDENCE.

THROUGH AUSTRALIAN SPECTACLES.—IL

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.']

Sin,—An Australian visitor to England, mixing freely with men of all shades of opinion, soon finds that he has undergone a curious change of political climate. He is parted by some subtle difference he can hardly define or analyse from even those with whom, on most public topics, he is in sympathy. Tie becomes conscious that hie political perspective, somehow, unlike those about him ; his sense of political values is different. He sees the political landscape from another point of view. It may be worth while to look at the politics of the Empire, for a moment, through Colonial eyes.

The typical Colonial is certainly not a "Jingo" in any foolish sense of that question-begging epithet. He is too much occupied with the rough work of a new land to have either energy or imagination to waste on idle military adventures. But the Colonial is an Imperialist of the most thorough type. The "Little Englander," with his frost- bitten imagination, his fatal want of perspective, his mistrust of the national destiny, is to the Colonial an unlovely and unintelligible human oddity. The Colonial, in a word, finds that he thinks more proudly of England, and dreams more

nobly for her, than does even the average Englishman! What explains that strain of warmer-blooded Imperialism in the Colonial mind?

Is it because the Colonist is a more imaginative and romantic creature, less roughly chastened by experience, and less familiar with the hard facts of the world, than the average Englishman ? No one will say so. The typical Colonist, on the whole, is a rougher fibred and more practical man than the average Englishman. The chief explanation of the difference of political mood between the two men lies in the fact that the Colonist sees the Empire, more or less, from the outside ; the Englishman sees it chiefly from the inside. So the Colonist, better even than the Englishman himself, can measure the part England plays in the great affairs of the world, and assess the political ideals of which she is the representative amongst the nations. The House of Commons is to the EmPire what its engine-room is to a great liner. It is the centre of its energy. The force that drives the ship is generated there. But the engine-room, after all, is not the place from which to get the best conception of the course the ship is steering, or the port it is likely to make. The stokers and firemen dis- charge a very useful, if distressful, office; they live in an atmosphere of great heat, are surrounded by much smoke, and are always in a state of active physical exertion. And of the whole ship's company the stokers and firemen are about the last to be visited by any glimpse of the stately aspect the great ship, which they are driving on its steadfast course

across the sea, wears to onlookers. Much of the political life of England suggests the heat and energy—to say nothing of the smoke-of tlie engine-room. It id most necessary and useful, but it has its disabilities and limitations. It is an affair of stokers, with the horizon of an engine-room. Would that all English politicians had a vision of the great ship of State, and of the destiny to which it is pressing, as seen from the outside

What contribution does England make to the world's life? What ideals does she represent ? For what causes does she stand in the arena of history ? Let her be judged by her relation to inferior races.

She holds in trust, for example—to take a concrete case— some three millions of brown-skinned Cingalese. What is her office to these ? She does not fill her pockets at their cost. She does not wring tribute from them. She exacts no unpaid toil. Amongst that picturesque, chattering, quick. witted, but shallow-natured race, she has the office of a schoolmaster; of a nurse. She is the patient drudge and teacher of civilisation. The Englishman as he stands in such a community is a prosaic figure, quite unconscious of any heroic) office. He is content, like the ancient Roman, to make roads, and enforce order, and clear the jungle. But he stands for higher ideals than the Roman knew. He is the representative of justice ; he organises pity; he makes patient war on ignor- ance; he is the guardian and warden of freedom. He slowly

creates for the races he governs new moral ideas ; he lifts them up to new moral levels. It is true the Englishman does not announce to the world, or even admit to himself, that be is seeking any such ends in a community like Ceylon. He goes to plant coffee and make a fortune. But be takes all these ideals with him. He enforces them as a part of his daily work.

What would happen if the Englishman and all he represents were suddenly withdrawn from a community like Ceylon ? The jungle would re-emerge. Order would vanish. A whole race would instantly relapse into a savagery in which man's life and woman's honour would be at the caprice of some native chief. Would the men of any other nation do the work better than Englishmen? Has the Belgian done it better in Africa, or the French in Tonquin, or the Dutch in Java ? The Continentals delight to paint the Englishman abroad as the most grasping of human beings, the universal appropriator, a mere bit of selfishness set on two legs. And with that odd joy in self-depreciation in which English pride not seldom disguises itself, the English- man repeats and accepts this misdescription of himself. But let the plain facts be looked in the face. England does not pick the pockets of her dependencies to fill her own. She imposes no taxes; she suffers them, rather, at the hands of her own Colonies. In Continental politics a dependency is always a mere sponge to be squeezed. But in the policy of England towards her Colonies and dependencies to-day we have such •an example of magnanimous unselfishness as cannot be paralleled in all history. Now the accident of his geography enables the Oolonist to see the contribution which, in spite of many blunders, England makes to the world's order and pease and happiness. And so he is kindled to a pride in his race and Empire the home-born Englishman does not always feel.

Do Englishman, again, quite realise how necessary the Empire is to the Colonies? It is usually the other side of this problem which is considered. The Empire needs colonies, and the far-stretching commerce which go

with colonies. But the Colonies need the shelter of the Empire, and they listen with keen anxiety to catch the Imperial note in British statesmanship. If it grows faint the outlook for the Colonies darkens. Take the case of Australia, for example. Let your readers imagine a population a little less than that of London scattered over a continent almost equal to the whole of Europe. It is a con- tinent of sunny skies, and soft airs, and clear landscapes; a land of only half-known mineral wealth, of wool, and wine, and wheat, and fruit, and of innumerable flocks and herds. It will grow anything. It offers such a field for the growth of a new nation as the world nowhere else possesses. There is space for nearly three Italies in New South Wales. More than three countries like Austria could be packed into West Australia, three Spains into Queensland, and more than three Frances into South Australia. And this whole continent is held in fee by a handful of the English-speaking race ! We could not hold it for a day but for the shelter of the British flag !

The "Little Englanders" are fond of prophesying that if England were at war the Colonies, out of prnddnt regard for their own safety, would "cut the painter," and so disentangle themselves from the dispute. So far, however, the Colonies persist in showing an almost absurdly eager anxiety to share in whatever war may be going on anywhere in the Empire ! But the Colonies are not so bankrupt of sense as not to know that, if they ceased to be part of the Empire, their national existence would be instantly exposed to perils new, near, and most menacing. They would have to buy a doubtful safety at the cost of creating fleets and raising armies of their own. So we have the keenest interest in the Imperial side of British politics. We are directly concerned that the fleets of England should be strong and her statesmen resolute. A "Little Englander" regime would in a single generation cost England her Colonies. That circumstance would be for England a misfortune; for the Colonies it would be a tragedy !

A Colonist, then, hardly knows how to express his feelings— what Mark Twain calls "the dull neutralities of undecorated speech" are quite inadequate—when he hears an English politician like Mr. John Morley explain that the Empire is built on a thin-blooded and strictly arithmetical selfishness ; that Colonies are not merely—to borrow Turg,ot's figure—fruit that drop, or are even to be shaken off, when they are ripe. There are children who value the Motherland solely for what it gives them, and who will ignobly scuttle from its side "when the guns begin to play "! A son who translated his mother into arithmetical terms in this fashion—or a mother who applied that process to her children—would be a moral curiosity ! But in the case of the Colonies, as it happens, sentiment and selfishness talk a common language and employ a common logic. The Colonists are proud of their place in the Empire. But if the "Little Englanders" deny us the luxury of this emotion, or doubt its genuineness or capacity for inspiring sacrifices, then it is to be added that the Empire is necessary to our safety. Is it any wonder that all Colonials are Imperialists?

The Colonist is, for many reasons, less interested in history, and perhaps less influenced by it, than the average English- man. For one thing, he has no history of his own as yet ; he is busy making it ! He is himself making a new nation, so his imagination runs forward with keen and questioning vision. It has no temptation to run backward! In this way the Colonist is more impressed by the future of the Empire than the history-burdened Englishman. And invariably the Colonist cherishes a proud, expectant, delighted faith in the English Empire of to-morrow. The happiest political inci- dent of this generation is, perhaps, the new friendship into which the relations betwixt England and the United States have suddenly crystallised. There is no formal treaty betwixt these two branches of the English-speaking race; there needs to be no treaty. But their friendship is a root of exhaustless strength to both Powers. It makes secure certain great political causes to which both are pledged.

Yet the politics of the United States are a quicksand. Moods of national feeling there change quickly, and change often for what seem absurdly inadequate reasons. But England has in her Colonies of to-day half a dozen potential Americas! Some who read these lines will live to see Australia with a population of twenty millions, the Cape with one of twenty millions, Canada, perhaps, with one of forty millions. Before the twentieth century, now at our finger- tips, is half spent the British Empire will be a planet-girdling zone of great Dominions, linked by ties of pride and affection and of material interest to the Motherland, the island seat of the race. That will give to the Empire more than the closest alliance with the United States could give it to-day. It will make triumphant all the great political ideals for which the Empire stands.

The cynic may say that all this is but an idle dream. Yet the dream, if idle, is noble. It certainly fills the chambers of the Colonist's brain. And if the dream has no other office, it at least serves to flush his politics with warmer tints of hope than be is always able to discover in the politics of his

English friends.—I am, Sir, &c., W. H. FITCHETT.