Imperial Expansion 3 



liable to be a grudge, probably quite undeserved, on the 

 part of the workers who imagine that they have not been 

 given an equal chance with those who are above them. If 

 I am correct in this, then State development must, in the 

 long run, prove less successful both for the country and for 

 its people than would be the case if we were all trained to 

 develop first ourselves and then the particular business 

 with which we are to become connected and through that 

 the prosperity of the State by our individual action and 

 enterprise. 



This is why I believe that individual self-development 

 brought about of course by State or philanthropic-aided 

 colleges or similar institutions must prove far better and 

 safer in the long run than if the State were allowed to be 

 developed by a privileged few, jealous of their position and 

 anxious to maintain it, perhaps unwittingly, at the expense 

 of the general population. If this view is correct we 

 could look for nothing but trouble and disappointment 

 later on if the views expressed by Mr. Wilson-Fox in the 

 paper that he read before the Royal Society of Arts on 

 December 13, igi6, when Lord Selborne was in the chair, 

 and, more recently, in liis article on "The Development 

 of the Empire's Resources" in the October Number of 

 the Nineteenth Centiiyy Revieiv, were agreed to by the 

 Government and the public because, as stated by one 

 speaker who claimed to be a Labour representative, Mr. 

 Fox had outlined an attractive and easy method of paying 

 for the War.i 



Mr. Fox is quite right when he claims that the resources 

 of the Empire could be and should be developed to a very 



' See also the paper read by Mr. Wilson-Fox before the Royal Colonial 

 Institute on January 9 as well as the address delivered by Mr. Alfred 

 Bigland, M.l'., before the Members of the London Chamber of 

 Commerce on January 30, of which a full report has been published, I 

 was glad to see, in IVest Africa (London), of February 9 (1918). 



