In earlier days merchant ships flew rather the flag of their port than of their nation, so that a vessel was known to be of Plymouth, Marseilles, Dantzic, or Bremen by the colours displayed. Thus the flag of Marseilles was blue with a white cross upon it; Texel, a flag divided horizontally into two equal strips, the upper being green and the lower black; Rotterdam was indicated by a flag having six horizontal green stripes upon it, the interspaces being white; Cherbourg, blue, white, blue, white, horizontally arranged; Riga, a yellow cross on a blue ground.
The British Empire—the Greater Britain across the seas, some eighty times larger in area than the home islands of its birth—must now engage our attention. Its material greatness is amazing, far exceeding that of any other empire the world has ever seen, and its moral greatness is equal to its material. Wherever the flag of Britain flies, there is settled law, property is protected, religion is free; it is no mere symbol of violence or rapine, or even of conquest. It is what it is because it represents everywhere peace, and civilization, and commerce. Protected by the Pax Britannica dwell four hundred millions out of every race under heaven, the
Mother of Nations extending to Jew, Parsee, Arab, Chinese, Blackfoot, Maori, the liberties that were won at Runnymead and in many another stern fight for life and freedom. In every school-room in the United States hangs the flag of their Union, the Stars and Stripes; and devotion to all that it symbolises is an essential part of the teaching. We in turn might well in our systems of education give a larger space to the history, laws, and literature of our great Empire, taking a more comprehensive view than is now ordinarily the case, studying the growth of the mighty States that have sprung into existence through British energy, and attaching at least as much importance to the lives of the men who have built up this goodly heritage as to the culinary shortcomings of Alfred or the schemes of Perkin Warbeck.
As regards the value of our Colonies to the Empire, the following extract from a speech made by the Prince of Wales at the Royal Colonial Institute may very aptly be quoted:—
"We regard the Colonies as integral parts of the Empire, and our warmest sympathies are with our brethren beyond the seas, who are no less dear to us than if they dwelt in Surrey or Kent. Mutual interests, as well as ties of affection, unite us as one people, and so long as we hold together we are unassailable from without. From a commercial point of view, the Colonies and India are among the best customers for home manufacturers, it being computed that no less than one-third of the total exports are absorbed by them. They offer happy and prosperous homes to thousands who are unable to gain a livelihood within the narrow limits of these islands, owing to the pressure of over-population and consequent over-competition. In transplanting themselves to our own Colonies, instead of to foreign lands, they retain their privileges as citizens of this great Empire, and live under the same flag as subjects of the same Sovereign. As Professor Seeley remarks in his very interesting work, 'The Expansion of England,' 'Englishmen in all parts of the world remember that they are of one blood and one religion; that they have one history, and one language and literature.' We are, in fact, a vast English nation, and we should take great care not to allow the emigrants who have gone forth from among us to imagine that they have in the slightest degree ceased to belong to the same community as ourselves."
Our statesmen and thinkers have never failed to recognise the brotherhood of Greater Britain. Of this fact it would be easy enough to reproduce illustrations by the score. We need, however, here but refer to the sentiments of the Earl of Rosebery on the expansion of the Empire, where we find him declaring—
"Since 1868 the Empire has been growing by leaps and bounds. That is, perhaps, not a process which everybody witnesses with unmixed satisfaction. It is not always viewed with unmixed satisfaction in circles outside these islands. There are two schools who view with some apprehension the growth of our Empire. The first is composed of those nations who, coming somewhat late into the field, find that Great Britain has some of the best plots already marked out. To those nations I will say that they must remember that our Colonies were taken—to use a well-known expression—at prairie value, and that we have made them what they are. We may claim that whatever lands other nations may have touched and rejected, and we have cultivated and improved, are fairly parts of our Empire, which we may claim to possess by an indisputable title. But there is another ground on which the extension of our Empire is greatly attacked, and the attack comes from a quarter nearer home. It is said that our Empire is already large enough, and does not need extension. That would be true enough if the world were elastic, but, unfortunately, it is not elastic, and we are engaged at the present moment, in the language of mining, in 'pegging out claims for the future.' We have to consider not what we want now, but what we shall want in the future. We have to consider what countries must be developed, either by ourselves or some other nation, and we have to remember that it is part of our responsibility and heritage to take care that the world, as far as it can be moulded by us, shall receive an 'English-speaking' complexion, and not that of another nation. We have to look forward beyond the chatter of platforms, and the passions of party, to the future of the race of which we are at present the trustees, and we should, in my opinion, grossly fail in the task that has been laid upon us did we shrink from responsibilities, and decline to take our share in a partition of the world which we have not forced on, but which has been forced upon us."
Statistics of area of square miles, population, and so forth, can be readily found by those who care to seek for them, and we need give them no place here; but let us at least try and realise just by bare enumeration something of what this Greater Britain is. In Europe it includes, besides the home islands, Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus. In Asia—the great Indian Empire, Ceylon, Aden, Hong-Kong, North Borneo, the Straits Settlements, Perim, Socotra, Labuan. In America—the Dominion of Canada, Newfoundland, Trinidad, Guiana, Honduras, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Bermudas, Barbadoes, Falkland Isles, the Leeward and Windward Isles. In Australasia—New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania, Queensland, New Zealand, Fiji, New Guinea. In Africa—the Cape Colony, Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Zululand, Natal,
Gold Coast, Lagos, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Mauritius, Seychelles, Ascension, St. Helena. Our list is by no means a complete one.