Kovomber 27, 1915- 
LAND AN I) WATER, 
THE FORUM. 
A Commentary on Present-day Problems. 
To learn to think of Imperialism in terms 
of responsibility rather than of power 
and dominion, that is the task of the 
coming days. And it is possible and 
necessary for us to give yet fuller meaning to this 
great ideal in terms of fellowship. A wider and 
truer patriotic ardour can attach itself to the 
conception of the British Commonwealth than to 
.that of the British Empire, provided we a\'oid the 
danger of understanding it in terms of cash benefits. 
A great Fellowship, whose object is the common 
well-being of all its members — that is the fair 
democratic interpretation of empire. It is the 
truest and highest interpretation and contains the 
best hope for the healing of the wounds and bitter- 
ness of our times and the times to come. To what 
dark places the contrary conception of aggressive 
dominion can lead, we have seen in the example of 
an enemy nation. We can only build out of 
fellowship, not out of hectoring dominion, a general 
loyalty sufficient to face the heavy sacrifices which 
will be necessary if we are to hold together, not so 
much what we have won, but what we have grown 
to be — a distinction by no means without a differ- 
ence. [ -' - 
If we analyse this concept of fellowship, we 
shall find that it is easy for us to accept it in its 
more general and obvious sense ; the difficulties 
and the greater advantages begin with its more 
intimate implications. There is, for instance, a 
very general conviction, testified to in our accus- 
tomed phraseology, of our sense of fellowshi]i with 
the men of our blood overseas. Most of our Cana- 
dian, Australasian and South African brothers, who 
have rallied to the defence of the Empire, have 
done so with no such long-headed sense of the 
gravity of the future international situation as 
necessarily affects the responsible statesmen of 
their respective lands ; but, with a more instinctive, 
natural loyalty to the old Flag and the old Country. 
This sentiment of the blood tie is a generous and a 
noble feeling, nor will any amount of rationalising 
by superior pseudo-intellectuals persuade the man 
of normal instincts to the contrary. It is a spiritual 
feeling, which setting a great idea before personal 
considerations, lifts men clear' of the material 
trammels that always tend to choke their lives. 
It is a fellowship realised in.acti(jn, which yet 
remains in the region of the national and general, 
and does not reach down into the personal and 
particular. 
This sense of fellowship and joint membership 
of the British Commonwealth should he carried 
here in the Mother Country down into the sphere 
first of the class, then of the person. We fight not 
as servants led by masters, but as brothers-in-arms. 
With us, as with our allies, the relation between 
officer and man is more comradel\' than ni the 
armies of our chief enemies. It is the best hope 
of our future. 
For, most surely, this is the fullness of meaning 
of this fellowship, that we are not onlj- brothers, 
but our brothers' keepers, not in war merely, or 
chiefly, but in peace : not at the gates of death 
alone, but in the common way of life. " It has never 
been an easy thesis to grasp. But there-is no escape 
from the remorseless logic of it. You cannot 
summon simple men in the name of freedom to a 
common danger of death and mutilation, and send 
their broken remnants back to disabilities that by 
no too great exaggeration may in many instances, 
be called slavery. You cannot rally them as 
brothers in the day of danger, and turn from them 
or against them as strangers when the danger is 
passed. If these words have any significance it is 
because they are not hastily adopted from the 
picturesque vocabular}' of the impatient agitator. 
Our conviction is that the way to social justice is 
a long and difficult and by no means a clear way ; 
that a civilisation which has taken many centiuies 
to shape by gradual and laborious processes of trial 
and error, cannot be shattered at a stroke, and at 
a stroke refashioned nearer to the heart's desire ; 
that there are no ready-made or permanent solu- 
tions as our glib extremists aver ; that it is change 
of heart and head in the many rather than change ' 
of plan by . the few that is wanted ; that at the 
worst surgery, not dynamite, is the proper cure 
for the sick body — and the state is surely a sick 
bodj- rather than a dilapidated or unsanitary 
house. But in the proportion that we deprecate . 
dynamite should we be eager to welcome the ,v. 
acceptable and necessary surgery. If we feel the 
danger of sudden transformations, it is incumbent 
upon us to set going, not to block, the processes of 
wholesome change. Those ,of us who clamour 
against the t}Tanny of fussy and short-sighted 
legislation would do well to emulate the devoted 
activities of those extreme progressives, who, what- 
ever the defects and dangers of their method, at 
least put the labour of thought and dri\-ing energy 
;.of work into their task. If we believe that demo- 
cracy not less than autocracy needs discipline, a 
discipline self-imposed, freely accepted, and then 
obediently submitted to, we must not retain the 
bad habit of belie\ing that discipline means the 
regimenting and management of only the ' less 
w^ealthv and less vocalclasses. 
It is, of course, by no means necessary to 
assume that the faults are all on one side of that 
.vague line (hard to determine, but recognised 
none the less as a reality) between the well-off 
with their parasites and the poor. So far as 
labour and sociaUst agitation is the mere envy of 
the possessions of others : so far as it misrepre- 
sents the motives or underestimates the sincerity 
of the conservers, and it does this often quite 
consciously as a matter of fighting tactics ; so 
far as it plays (as in some quarters in the present 
crisis) the desperate and- because it is gambling on 
tremendous and incalculable issues — the desperately 
wicked game, of using the country's difficulty to 
compass its own sectional ends, we can indignantly 
repudiate it and thwart it. It is, however, by 
no means easy to disentangle perverse and un- 
scrupulous from fanaticall\' conscientious motives 
in this old quarrel. There are^dee]^ wiX)iigs_tha 
{Continued on pnijt 5.) 
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