Is it truly, as has been asserted, in obedience to a powerful wave of "Offensive Imperialism" that Great Britain has of late convened representatives of her free Colonies to meet, in London, to confer about the best means to adopt for the general security of the whole British Empire?
Is it, as also asserted, with the unworthy design to entrap the Colonies that their self-appointed delegates have been called in secret conclaves where the political leaders of England would, by unfair and foul means, prevail upon them to agree to unjust sacrifices on the part of the peoples they represented?
I am absolutely unable to share such erroneous views. I must admit with all candor that I have not yet been brought to the conclusion that British Statesmen are all contaminated with "Machiavellism". A free country like the United Kingdom is not a land where such deplorable principles are likely to blossom.
What are then the extraordinary events which have recently taken place to justify the assertion of the "Nationalist" leader that, in the course of the last few years, a complete Revolution has been wrought in the relations of the autonomous Colonies with their Metropolis? Of such a Revolution, cunningly promoted to bring the colonies against their will to participate in the Imperial wars—les guerres de l'empire—I do not perceive the smallest shadow of traces.
As everybody else, living with their eyes not closed to the light of day, I clearly saw, principally during the last twenty years, that important developments were taking place under the sun; that European equilibrium upon the maintenance of which universal peace so much depended, was rapidly breaking asunder; that the German Empire was more and more unmasking her guilty ambition to dominate an enslaved universe; that, to reach that goal, she was organizing an army formidable by its millions of warriors, their superior training, their ironed discipline and their unrivalled armament. I knew that the sadly famous Kaiser Wilhelm II. was determined, at all cost, to increase the power of his Empire by the addition of a military fleet in such proportions as to be able, in a successful naval battle, to conquer the supremacy of the seas.
Under such circumstances, was it to be supposed that the Statesmen responsible for the government of Great Britain would be so careless and so blind as not to see the dark spots crowding on the horizon!
The problem of Imperial defence was then once more raised, not by a mere caprice of vain glory on the part of England, but by the inevitable outcome of the initiative of would-be opponents, if not actually declared enemies. The overseas colonies being more and more likely to be attacked, in a general conflict, was it surprising that the British Government was induced to confer with them for their common defence under the new conditions which were surely not of their own metropolitan or colonial creation.
All the representatives of Great Britain, of Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, at the London conferences, took part in those solemn deliberations with the full sense of their responsibility. None of them was so mistaken as to consider the question, of paramount importance, of the DEFENSIVE organization of the Empire, as futile, merely to be used by the astuteness of some and the guilty complicity of others, joining together to sacrifice the future of their common country. The odious imputation, the shameless charge, were equally unjust and calumnious for the British ministers and the colonial public men who, in their turn, went to London to deliberate on subjects so vitally interesting all the component parts of the Empire.