December ii, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER . 
THE FORUM. 
A Commentary on Present-day Problems. 
THE resistless pressure of circumstance has 
accomplished for the British Imperial 
idea what the processes of logic and the 
voices of sundry prophets crying in the 
wilderness entirely failed to achieve, this reluct- 
ance to accept a clear idea is a common enough, 
indeed an inevitable, experience of essentially 
• slow moving democracy. It is not because logical 
thinking is futile or our prophets false, but merelv 
that our people were distracted by a hundred 
conflicting and secondary issues and there was no 
concentrated attention available for a fundamental 
problem. Catastrophe has the compelling effect 
of focussing upon primaries, and it is our common 
task and our responsibility to give attention to our 
primary problems while "they are thus . focussed 
for the general vision. In The New Empire ' 
Partnership, Messrs. Percy Hurd and Archibald 
HuRD present what is in effect an admirable case 
for a fundamental constitutional change, whereby 
alone the anomalous relations of the constituent 
, parts of the Empire may be superseded by a 
machinery of union which offers to the Dominions 
, a real voice in. the control of their foreign policy. 
It is perhaps curious that the authors seem to stop 
short of the conclusion that the establishment of the 
Imperial Council on which the Dominions shall be 
represented as independent nations must be an imme- * 
diate consequence of the War— nothing could well 
be clearer than the inferefices to be drawn from 
the quoted utterances of Dominion statesmen. 
Messrs. Hurd fall back upon the traditional British 
policy of never altering a working arrangement, 
however illogical, as long as it in fact works. There 
is a profound sagacity underlying this tradition, 
but there inevitably comes a time when it is dan- 
gerous to continue an obvious anomaly which 
desperately affects fundamentals. That "time has 
surely come. If the issues of this War had been 
less clear, the challenge less truculent and unpro- 
voked, there might well have been resentment on 
the part of the Dominions against being involved 
without the responsibility of consultation. It is 
no real solution of the ufiderlying difficulty to say 
that the Dominions were free to stand out and rallied 
instinctively to the flag in a conviction of common 
danger. It remains that they were in fact com- 
mitted to that danger by actions and deliberations 
outside their control. The tie of blood and the 
sentiment of loyalty are potent things, but not a 
sufficient basis for, or guarantee of, successful and 
ctjuitable government. It is a common experience 
that wise men put their money dealings with friends 
upon a business basis, not from distrust of friend- 
ship, but from a conviction that out of any loose 
agreement there may easily arise some ambiguity 
to cause serious difficulty. It is an enlightening 
if an inadequate analogy. The Dominion states- 
men have had cause for feeling that while they 
have been treated with courteous consideration, and 
even admitted casually into council, this has been by 
way of concession. What they wish is in plain words 
the right to be consulted. It is certain that they will 
press their claim to that right, ^nd it is for us to be 
ready to accept it, for there is no principle known 
to us on which it can be denied. There seems no 
escape from the conclusion that that right must be 
estabhshed in a business-hkc way b^^ the institution 
of the Imperial Council or some suCh constitutional 
contrivance which by any other name will work as 
well. Readers, of the New Empire Partnership 
should not shrink from following 'the arguments ol" 
the authors to their inevitable conclusion, nor shirk 
(with them) a consideration of the actual clauses 
of the deed of partnership. 
If Messrs. Hurd do excellent service in pre- 
senting for our consideration the point of view of the 
Dominions on this important question of responsi- 
ble co-operation in council, they have an interest- 
ing case also to present on our behalf to the Domin- 
ions in the matter of Imperial Defence. ^Staunch 
blue- water men, they see the problem in terms 
of a single Imperial Navv under central control 
with separate militias and a professional, long 
service army under an Imperial General Staff. 
They outline the doctrine, which the course of 
naval operations in the war has. made clear beyond 
dispute, of the unity of the seas— with effective 
concentration as the pivot of strategy. We can 
recall discussions that have now a strange air of 
unreality a? to the disposition of the vessels con- 
tributed by the Dominions : pleas that they should 
remain tethered locally (for advertisement pur- 
poses) m the full view of their contributors ; faint 
resentments that certain ships. were incorporated" 
in the " Home Fleet " as if the motheriand were ' 
drawing upon forces contrived by the Dominions' 
for their defence to supplement her own defence. 
It is now conspicuously plain that the distant 
Dominions were essentially safeguarded by the 
North Sea concentration, "it was not necessary 
as it was obviously not feasible, to line the measure- 
less coasts of the Empire in a grotesque diffusion of 
forces.^ General Botha, as he gratefully acknow- 
ledged, was able to deal with German South-W^est 
Africa because of Admiral JelHcoe's relentless 
blockade six thousand miles away. Quite wisely 
the authors insist on an old protest of theirs against 
the misnomer " Home Fleet." It is the kind of 
terminology that embodies and perpetuates a 
completely false idea and leads easily to other 
false assumptions. The term " Grand Fleet " 
which it has been natural to all of us to use during 
the war, embodies the true conception. The 
Germans, with a better appreciation of the facts 
always spoke of their High Sea Fleet. Truth to 
tell there are no longer seas and continents ; there 
is a world. And it is as a world problem, not as a 
series of local problems, that the subject of im- 
perial defence must be approached after, as we 
now reahse it should have been before, the war. 
As a summary of sound naval and political 
doctrine, backed by detailed knowledge and iUus- 
trated by salient documents, this book on the 
implications of Empire may be warmly com- 
mended ; while it is impossible not to approve the 
authors' general plea for the economic develop- 
ment of the five nations in partnership seeing that 
th.ey deprecate any policy of exploitation or of 
... _ iC'vnIhiiH)} 0)1 foi/c j.J 
