In handing over to the now united states of South Africa the unqualified control of their own affairs, Britain necessarily left to them the vexed problem of devising a just relation between the ruling races and their subjects of backward or alien stocks; the problem which had been the source of most of the difficulties of South Africa for a century past, and which had long delayed the concession of full self-government. Nowhere in the world does this problem assume a more acute form than in South Africa, where there is not only a majority of negroes, mostly of the vigorous Bantu stock, but also a large number of immigrants mainly from India, who as subjects of the British crown naturally claim special rights. South Africa has to find her own solution for this complex problem; and she has not yet fully found it. But in two ways her association with the British Empire has helped, and will help, her to find her way towards it. If the earlier policy of the British government, guided by the missionaries, laid too exclusive an emphasis upon native rights, and in various ways hampered the development of the colony by the way in which it interpreted these rights, at least it had established a tradition hostile to that policy of mere ruthless exploitation of which such an ugly illustration was being given in German South-West Africa. An absolute parity of treatment between white and black must be not only impracticable, but harmful to both sides. But between the two extremes of a visionary equality and a white ascendancy ruthlessly employed for exploitation, a third term is possible—the just tutelage of the white man over the black, with a reasonable freedom for native custom. 'A practice has grown up in South Africa,' says the greatest of South African statesmen,[8] 'of creating parallel institutions, giving the natives their own separate institutions on parallel lines with institutions for whites. It may be that on these lines we may yet be able to solve a problem which may otherwise be insoluble.' It is a solution which owes much to the British experiments of the previous period; and the principle which inspires it was incorporated in the Act of Union. This is one of the innumerable fruitful experiments in government in which the British system is so prolific. Again, the problem of the relationship between Indian immigrants and white colonists is an acutely difficult one. It cannot be said to have been solved. But at least the fact that the South African Union and the Indian Empire are both partners in the same British commonwealth improves the chances of a just solution. It helped to find at least a temporary adjustment in 1914; in the future also it may contribute, in this as in many other ways, to ensure that a fair consideration is given to both sides of the thorny question of inter-racial relationship.
[8] General Smuts, May 22, 1917.
The events which led up to, and still more the events which followed, the South African War had thus brought a solution for the South African problem, which had been a continuous vexation since the moment of the British conquest. It was solved by the British panacea of self-government and equal rights. Who could have anticipated, twenty years or fifty years ago, the part which has been played by South Africa in the Great War? Is there any parallel to these events, which showed the gallant general of the Boer forces playing the part of prime minister in a united South Africa, crushing with Boer forces a revolt stirred up among the more ignorant Boers by German intrigue, and then leading an army, half Boer and half British, to the conquest of German South-West Africa?
The South African War had proved to be the severest test which the modern British Empire had yet had to undergo. But it had emerged, not broken, as in 1782, but rejuvenated, purged of the baser elements which had alloyed its imperial spirit, and confirmed in its faith in the principles on which it was built. More than that, on the first occasion on which the essential principles or the power of the empire had been challenged in war, all the self-governing colonies had voluntarily borne their share. Apart from a small contingent sent from Australia to the Soudan in 1885, British colonies had never before—indeed, no European colony had ever before—sent men oversea to fight in a common cause: and this not because their immediate interests were threatened, but for the sake of an idea. For that reason the South African War marks an epoch not merely in the history of the British Empire, but of European imperialism as a whole.
The unity of sentiment and aim which was thus expressed had, however, been steadily growing throughout the period of European rivalry; and doubtless in the colonies, as in Britain, the new value attached to the imperial tie was due in a large degree to the very fact of the eagerness of the other European powers for extra-European possessions. Imperialist sentiment began to become a factor in British politics just about the beginning of this period: in 1878 the Imperial Federation Society was founded, and about the same time Disraeli, who had once spoken of the colonies as 'millstones around our necks,' was making himself the mouthpiece of the new imperialist spirit. To this wave of feeling a very notable contribution was made by Sir John Seeley's brilliant book, "The Expansion of England." Slight as it was, and containing no facts not already familiar, it gave a new perspective to the events of the last four centuries of British history, and made the growth of the Empire seem something not merely casual and incidental, but a vital and most significant part of the British achievement. Its defect was, perhaps, that it concentrated attention too exclusively upon the external aspects of the wonderful story, and dwelt too little upon its inner spirit, upon the force and influence of the instinct of self-government which has been the most potent factor in British history. The powerful impression which it created was deepened by other books, like Froude's "Oceana" and Sir Charles Dilke's "Greater Britain," the title of which alone was a proclamation and a prophecy. It was strengthened also by the wonderful imperial pageants, like nothing else ever witnessed in the world, which began with the two Jubilee celebrations of 1887 and 1897, and were continued in the funerals of Queen Victoria and Edward VII., the coronations of Edward VII. and George V., and the superb Durbars of Delhi. The imaginative appeal of such solemn representations of a world-scattered fellowship of peoples and nations and tongues must not be underestimated. At first there was perhaps a suggestion of blatancy, and of mere pride in dominion, in the way in which these celebrations were received; the graver note of Kipling's 'Recessional,' inspired by the Jubilee of 1897, was not unneeded. But after the strain and anxiety of the South African War, a different temper visibly emerged.
More important than the pageants were the conferences of imperial statesmen which arose out of them. The prime ministers of the great colonies began to deliberate in common with the statesmen of Britain; and the discussions, though at first quite informal and devoid of authority, have become more intimate and vital as time has passed: a beginning at least has been made in the common discussion of problems affecting the Empire as a whole. And alongside of, and in consequence of, all this, imperial questions have been treated with a new seriousness in the British parliament, and the offices which deal with them have ceased to be, as they once were, reserved for statesmen of the second rank. The new attitude was pointedly expressed when in 1895 Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, the most brilliant politician of his generation, who could have had almost any office he desired, deliberately chose the Colonial Office. His tenure of that office was not, perhaps, memorable for any far-reaching change in colonial policy, though he introduced some admirable improvements in the administration of the tropical colonies; but it was most assuredly memorable for the increased intensity of interest which he succeeded in arousing in imperial questions, both at home and in the colonies. The campaign which he initiated, after the South African War, for the institution of an Imperial Zollverein or a system of Colonial Preference was a failure, and indeed was probably a blunder, since it implied an attempt to return to that material basis of imperial unity which had formed the core of the old colonial system, and had led to the most unhappy results in regard to the American colonies. But at least it was an attempt to realise a fuller unity than had yet been achieved, and in its first form included an inspiring appeal to the British people to face sacrifices, should they be necessary, for that high end. Whether these ideas contribute to the ultimate solution of the imperial problem or not, it was at least a good thing that the question should be raised and discussed.
One further feature among the many developments of this era must not be left untouched. It is the rise of a definitely national spirit in the greater members of the Empire. To this a great encouragement has been given by the political unity which some of these communities have for the first time attained during these years. National sentiment in the Dominion of Canada was stimulated into existence by the Federation of 1867. The unification of Australia which was at length achieved in the Federation of 1900 did not indeed create, but it greatly strengthened, the rise of a similar spirit of Australian nationality. A national spirit in South Africa, merging in itself the hostile racial sentiments of Boer and Briton, may well prove to be the happiest result of the Union of South Africa. In India also a national spirit is coming to birth, bred among a deeply divided people by the political unity, the peace, and the equal laws, which have been the greatest gifts of British rule; its danger is that it may be too quick to imagine that the unity which makes nationhood can be created merely by means of resolutions declaring that it exists, but the desire to create it is an altogether healthy desire. On the surface it might appear that the rise of a national spirit in the great members of the Empire is a danger to the ideal of imperial unity; but that need not be so, and if it were so, the danger must be faced, since the national spirit is too valuable a force to be restricted. The sense of nationhood is the inevitable outcome of the freedom and co-operation which the British system everywhere encourages; to attempt to repress it lest it should endanger imperial unity would be as short-sighted as the old attempt to restrict the natural growth of self-government because it also seemed a danger to imperial unity. The essence of the British system is the free development of natural tendencies, and the encouragement of variety of types; and the future towards which the Empire seems to be tending is not that of a highly centralised and unified state, but that of a brotherhood of free nations, united by community of ideas and institutions, co-operating for many common ends, and above all for the common defence in case of need, but each freely following the natural trend of its own development.
That is the conception of empire, unlike any other ever entertained by men upon this planet, which was already shaping itself among the British communities when the terrible ordeal of the Great War came to test it, and to prove as not even the staunchest believer could have anticipated, that it was capable of standing the severest trial which men or institutions have ever had to undergo.