[77-1] Ency. Brit., vol. viii. p. 971.
[77-2] Whitaker's Almanack, London, 1913, p. 489.
[77-3] Woodrow Wilson, The State, 1898, Boston, rev. ed., 1911, p.18.
{79}
IV
THE SEVEN NATIONS
"THE representatives of the great nations across the seas."
A British Colonial Secretary used these words[79-1] in a speech welcoming to the Imperial Conference of 1902 the Prime Ministers of the other Britannic governments. This should be enough to permit the terminology to any Pan-Angle, when he refers to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland or Canada, and the men who govern them. These "great nations across the seas" are themselves conscious of nationhood on a parity with that of the British Isles. A representative of one of them in the same year thus spoke of his country and its fellow nations: "The British Empire . . . a galaxy of independent nations . . . There is not in Canada at the present moment a single British soldier to maintain British supremacy—moreover it is Canadian soldiers who are today garrisoning Halifax . . . The whole Australian continent {80} has now been moulded into another nation under the flag . . . and I can see dawning in South Africa the day when there will be another Confederation . . . "[80-1] Eleven years later in that South Africa another national Prime Minister spoke of his country and his countrymen. "Their country was part of the British Empire. They could not get away from it; it was their Constitution; and yet they were as free as if they were their own State, and they took up the position—he had said so in England—that they were not a subject State, but part of the British Empire, and were on an equality. They were a sister State of England."[80-2]
When throughout these lands writers similarly use the word "nation," the student of Pan-Angle affairs need proceed to no further investigation, though he may be unable to justify the word by current dictionary definition. Enough if he notes its political significance. In the same class are such words as "independent," "self-governing," and "autonomous": subject to the same theoretical queries but established by the same practical usage. Anyone who would question such usage is silenced by the recognition that it only conforms to facts. On such facts is based the thesis of these pages.
The seven units of the Pan-Angle world differ {81} both in size and density of population,[81-1] Hence it might be objected that to classify according to these divisions is to neglect the relative strength and importance of the various political groups, Newfoundland is not as important in population or wealth as the British Isles; while near Canada, it cannot be considered a part of Canada, New Zealand is two-thirds as far from Australia as Newfoundland is from Scotland, and emphatically is no part of its huge neighbour,[81-2] One of its citizens writes: "Although one thousand miles distant from Australia at the nearest point, although situated in a different climate and inevitably destined to display a different national temperament, although already possessed of a national {82} character, national aspirations and national peculiarities, although already served by Imperial affiliation much better than it could be served by any mere local federation, the Australian Prime Minister has no deeper insight than to predict the sinking of New Zealand into the status of a petty and subordinate Australian State. . . . before New Zealand denies its independence under the Empire, and seeks shelter under the mantle of the [Australian] Federal Parliament, there will be a new political heaven and a new political earth. At the present time the proposal is simply absurd." [82-1]