Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity

by George R. Parkin

An able Australian writer lately said in the Times, 'Australia is one of the least self-contained countries in the world. It is a wonderful producer of raw material. But it must trade off this raw material. … A dozen big "stations" would supply wool enough to clothe every man, woman and child in Australia. How is the big remainder, almost the whole, to be disposed of? We must sell it in the other hemisphere. We have no choice. … The fact is we cannot {198} produce all we want to consume, and we cannot consume all that we can easily produce. … We must sell our surplus abroad. It would not be worth while disturbing the deposit at Broken Hill only to pack away millions of silver coins in vaults.' He goes on to say: 'England could do without Australia better than Australia could do without England. The one imaginable event would mean something like ruin; the other, only disaster. England's prosperity is rooted in many countries, in so many that she is always able to turn a brave face in any single direction.'

Leading merchants and financiers of Australia have said to me that six months stoppage of the English trade would mean the closing up of three-fourths of the commercial and financial houses of the country. The rapid expansion of this trade every day increases the importance of the Suez Canal and the Cape of Good Hope routes, the two channels along which Australian commerce chiefly flows. Another field for trade is opening up in the China seas and in India. For a people thus related to Europe, Africa, and Asia, the Eastern Question, with all that it involves, has a deep and permanent interest. The question of whether Great Britain or Russia is in India and holds command of Indian waters is vital to Australia's position in the Southern seas.

On this point the Melbourne Age not long since said: 'The growth of Australia into a nation will bring with it the burdens of a nation, among which {199} the burden of foreign relations is the worst, especially if the relationship concerns a hostile power. Australia is already concerned in the Russian advance on India. …The possession of the Indian seaboard means so much to the safety of these colonies that the mere mention of it is sufficient to awaken attention on the subject: for if the peace of Australia demands that foreign nations shall not post themselves in the Pacific, still more vital is it that Russian guns shall not point over the Indian ocean, or Russian cruisers gather in Indian harbours. Australia shares in the danger, and is interested in meeting it, whether from the Imperial or the local point of view. Even as an independent state, Australia could not afford to agree to an occupation of India by Russia; in fact, our danger would be all the greater. If the Russians reach the sea-front the menace to Australia will be intolerable, and Australia has its own interest in preventing this. The defence of Australia begins on the hills outside Herat, and there already the attack has begun.' I have preferred to quote an Australian opinion upon this point to giving my own.

But even the questions connected with the trade routes and India do not exhaust the European interests of Australia. She has Germany and France at her doors, the one in New Guinea and the other at New Caledonia and the New Hebrides. With both she has had irritating points of difference and to the presence of both in the Pacific she objects. {200} The nearness of the great Dutch colonies of Java and the neighbouring islands is not now a subject of anxiety, but should the course of European politics ever lead to the absorption of Holland by Germany, an apparently not impossible contingency, the Dutch colonies would become more serious factors in Australasian affairs, for a great European naval and military power would control a native population which numbers 20,000,000, inhabiting islands which stretch along and lie close to the uninhabited side of Australia. The present able administrator of New Guinea, Sir William McGregor, who has long made a special study of the political relations of the Pacific, expressed to me his opinion that Australasian independence, with the consequent withdrawal of Britain's protection, would almost certainly result in French and German efforts to secure positions in Australasia at the expense of the colonies.

The defence of her sea-borne commerce, greater in proportion to population, as has been said, than that of any other country in the world, must always be a foremost thought in the Australian mind. On the conditions which will render that defence secure military authorities are practically agreed. Speaking of the great naval stations which command the principal trade routes, Major General Sir Bevan Edwardes said after his late careful study of Australian defence: 'It will thus be seen how mutually dependent the scattered parts of the Empire must necessarily be. The mother-country in maintaining {201} these fortified stations affords direct protection to Australian interests. The Cape Colony, in bearing a share in the defence of the most important of these stations, lends a hand to Australia in the event of war. Hong Kong, Singapore, Ceylon and Mauritius, in the large contributions they have made to defence, and the considerable annual sums applied to military purposes, are not only defending themselves, but the interests of the whole nation, including those of Australia. Canada, by the construction of that grand line of communication, the Canada Pacific Railway—the importance of which will be fully shown in our next great war—and when she has completed the defences of Esquimault, will in the same way aid in the general national defence.' He adds, and I venture to italicize his words: 'Australia, as being the most remote of all portions of the Empire, and having the largest trade routes, would gain more in war from the existence of these stations than any other group of colonies. The idea that local defence will suffice for the needs of a commercial country, and that the interests of Australasia end with her territorial waters, is utterly false. The real defence of the Australasian colonies and their trade will be secured by fleets thousands of miles from their shores[1].'

Once more, China, with its population of 400,000,000, is a close neighbour to Australia with its 4,000,000. Only narrow seas separate them. The decisive objection felt in every part of Australia to the immigration {202} of Chinese, and the steps taken to prevent it, point to relations which might easily lead to serious rupture between the two countries. I have heard sober-minded Australians, including cabinet ministers, affirm that for a long time to come Australia of itself would be absolutely powerless to offer any adequate resistance to an irritated China if she used her considerable fleet for the annoyance of Australian commerce, or if she chose to flood with a Mongolian population the vast unoccupied areas of the North and West coasts of the continent, which are incapable of defence by land forces from the colonies. The idea is sometimes brought forward in Australia that England's desire to keep on good terms with China and Australia's resolution to prevent a large Chinese immigration, bring Imperial and colonial interests into hopeless conflict on a fundamental point of policy. On the other hand it may be fairly questioned whether Australia, without the weight of British influence and the strength of British ironclads behind her, would have escaped serious consequences through her impulsive action in denying international rights to Chinamen. But leaving aside this question, it is still clear that so long as China is a naval power of considerable strength in seas frequented by Australian commerce, so long Australia cannot forget her existence and neighbourhood. An independent Australia would be compelled at once to develop a navy equal at least to that which she meets in those seas, otherwise she would have no means of {203} checking or chastising the insolence of the meanest Chinese junk which interfered with Australian trade or attacked an Australian ship.

It is manifest, then, that Australia's position is far from being one of isolation. Conditions more different from those under which the United States started upon their career of independence it is difficult to imagine. Almost the last act of Britain before the Revolution was to crush the only other European power which had a footing in America, and might prove a menace to the colonies. Wolfe won at Quebec in 1759—and Independence was declared in 1776. From 1789 till 1815 the whole of Europe was plunged, in strife so desperate that the United States were left free to work out their own development as no nation had ever been left to do so before. Nevertheless the short war of 1812 ruined American commerce, paralyzed industry, and closed by far the larger number of American business houses. It showed that isolation and an ability to ward off actual invasion did not give immunity from the calamities of war.

It seems to me that two inferences, most misleading when applied to the present condition of the British world, are constantly drawn from the results of the American Revolution, and the growth of the United States.

In the first place, because Britain's power in the world was not seriously affected by the loss of the American colonies, it is supposed that she would suffer as little from the loss of those which she now {204} possesses. No inference could be more mistaken. When the American colonies were gone, there still remained space in which a new colonial empire could be founded; there was still room to find bases of maritime power and commercial influence on all the great oceans, and in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. England at once found it necessary to avail herself of this opportunity. There is no chance left now to found a third colonial empire. The other nations of Europe, finding out too late for themselves the advantage which England had gained, have appropriated what small portions were open for their occupation.

Again, the fact that the United States have in the course of a century grown into a world-power of the first magnitude tends to mislead the imagination in forecasting the future of the colonies. Let Canada and Australia, it is thought, make themselves independent, and the history of the United States will be repeated; their greatness equalled in each case. Many circumstances unite to make such a result impossible.