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government which have grown beyond the re- 
sources of tht -riders. 
Speculatively, of course, it is possible to dis- 
pute any such right of the trader to establish his 
settlement, or of the government to put its power 
and resources behind the trader, and to exercise, 
in last instance, force to maintain such speculative, 
equivocal rights. But to adopt such a position 
is in effect to admit that (to take but an instance) 
the nomad Indian tribes should still be holding the 
North American continent and preventing the 
development of all that wealth which is the 
means of livelihood of the higher civilisations. 
It is a theory that cannot flourish outside the 
study. The practical business of running and 
feeding a crowded world disposes of such academic 
pleas, which, however, still unfortunately influence 
the beliefs of not a few amongst us. Indeed, if 
one pierces at a stroke right to the heart of the 
problem of world government, of civilisation, of 
the promotion of peace, one finds it ultimateh' 
to resolve itself into this difficulty of the clash of 
the higher and lower civilisations. It is a problem 
which cannot be shelved, and the least likelj^ way 
towards solution is the ignoring of it. We shall 
beg occasion to dissect that significant generalisa- 
tion in later comments. For the present it is 
important to assert the doctrine of Empire and 
its developments, especially among the less 
developed races, in its lowest terms. 
Empire is primarily a stewardship. It pre- 
scribes ver^' definite limits to the right of ex- 
ploitation. It carries with it the duty of preparing 
the backward race for self-government. It assures 
to the members of that race full human and civic 
rights, withholding political rights only on account 
of practical difficulties which the abstract and 
symmetrical assumptions of the theorist do not 
face. If we look at the results, we can in the 
main, in no spirit of self-righteousness, claim 
that the task of British stewardship has been 
seriously attempted and not discreditably per- 
formed. 
We have then two broad imperial problems : 
one a problem of trusteeships— the task of governing 
with justice and leading with fearless generosity 
towards political emancipation races which in 
fact not merely in theory, are incapable of main- 
taining peace and justice. This is the problem 
of the dependencies. 
Our second main problem is that of finding 
a satisfactory machinery of co-operation with the 
self-governing, free peoples of the Dominions. It 
is a commonplace of British political method to 
continue a working arrangement, however illogical 
so long as it does in fact work, and only very 
slowly to grope or to be forced to a more complete 
settlement by circumstance. If it is an instinct 
of our practical genius to prefer the working 
anomaly to the theoretically "perfect paper con- 
stitution, still the poHcy of laissez faire is un- 
questionably the frequent defect of this sound, 
practical quality. 
Casual observers of imperial affairs may have 
missed what is most clear to interested students, 
that there exists a serious constitutional anomaly 
in the existing machinery of co-operation, which our 
brothers of the Dominions cannot long suffer. 
There is growing up in those Dominions a con- 
viction, expressed tentatively here and there by 
their responsible ministers and journals and 
moving towards the formulation of a demand, 
inevitable in any case and only to be precipitated 
by the War, for a responsible share, not merely in 
the discussion but in the decision and direction 
of those policies which affect the whole Empire of 
which the\- are not the subject but the independent, 
co-ordinated and co-operating parts. 
It is a demand which when it is presented 
can for no sort of logical or practical reason be 
withheld. But it is none the less necessary that 
such a demand should be foreseen, pondered, 
discussed and widely understood by us so that the 
details of the machinery of co-operation may be 
wisely determined without needless friction or 
delay. It is quite obviously impossible that these 
poHtically self-conscious and self- directive nations 
should continue to be committed to policies 
intimately effecting their destinies, even to the 
supreme adventure of war, by the decisions of a 
cabinet or a minister elected by voters in these 
islands and, primarily, on some domestic issue. 
What the War has abundantly proved is, what 
no less terrible a trial could so well have served to 
prove, that British citizenship is a reality not a 
visionary conception ; that the men of our blood 
and our tradition are content to die for it. There 
can be no question now, as there was in that 
miserable tragedy of laissez faire, the secession of 
the American colonies, of any reluctance on the 
part of the Dominions to take their share of the 
burden of our responsibilities. Ypres, Gaba Tepe, 
and even more significantly the quelling of the 
South African rebellion and the campaign in 
(ierman South West Africa, have proved that for 
all time. 
The immensity of the task of recon- 
struction and the safeguarding of the fabric and 
the spiritual heritage of our Commonwealth will 
draw us all the closer together. A just and liberal 
solution of our second problem will simplify that 
of the first — the problem of the wise government 
and development of the peoples of the Empire who 
are not politically emancipated. And, more imme- 
diately, this new vision of our destiny in terms 
not of power but of responsibility, especially when 
viewed in the light of the facts of war, should help 
to the modification of the postulates of extremists. 
He is indeed a hardy Jingo whose unqualified belief 
in the method of conflict over that of co-operation 
should survive this world catastrophe ; and he an 
implacable precisionist who shall see no larger 
problems than strain the burden of this little land 
and shall fail to see that a new meaning has 
been given to the brotherhood of the British race 
in the crisis of a common danger, the exaltation of 
a common heroism, in the sorrows and ex- 
haustion of a common loss. 
There are no royal roads to peace. The 
world-state is the ultimate expression of any 
practical pacifism ; and the world-state is indeed 
a long way off. 
Meanwhile, a peace nucleus in the shape of a 
voluntary but intimate association of States com- 
prising more than a fourth of the habitable world's 
territory stands ready for us to cement by intelli- 
gent foresight, by ready sympathy and mutual 
sacrifice, or to hazard by indift'erence, by greed, or 
by pusillanimous vision. 
Is there not a possible harmonv of Jingo and 
Pacificist doctrine in a creed of a responsible Im- 
perialism ; and work for their now conflicting 
energies in the task of the consolidation of the 
Greater Commonwealth r 
