All over the Britannic world are men working for "closer union." "The wisest and most farseeing Imperialists have steadily maintained that the ultimate end of the whole movement is Federation."[209-1] They are working now with only the six Britannic nations as their acknowledged field. Organized and unorganized, they are seeking patiently and intelligently for the safety of their respective nations, which they know is bound up in the safety of the whole people. They know the political ideals of their race. They know that though the unrepresented may be spasmodically willing to waive their rights in times of great common danger, they none the less believe that "taxation without representation is tyranny." These men know also that money gifts by any Pan-Angle nation to a navy controlled by another Pan-Angle nation is contrary to the political instincts of all involved. They know that "mutual funk," though it may hold their nations together for a time, is no safeguard against the future. They are working to create a political entity, able by the determination of its representatives to swing the whole of its strength {210} at once against any foe. These men have undertaken to persuade the Britannic Pan-Angle nations to put aside local prejudices and to support the whole of which each is a part.
Plans for Britannic "closer union" range from a scheme for Britannic representation in the British Parliament at London, such as Franklin advocated before the race had evolved federalism, through schemes for an alliance of the six nations with a capital outside the British Isles[210-1] to a plan for definite federation, including a new Britannic Parliament to be constituted of the representatives from each of the six nations.[210-2]
Being now in the stage of vague alliance, it may be that the Britannic Pan-Angles must accomplish definitely the alliance stage as a step on the road to federation. If so, those who favour a Britannic alliance[210-3] have the wisdom of the race on their side. But the same wisdom prophesies that the negative advantages of alliance will have to be changed later to the affirmative strength of a common government. Federation has been "the great ideal of the nineteenth century,"[210-4] and apparently continues to {211} gain advocates. Britannic "present 'imperial architects' are building more carefully and laboriously than did their predecessors."[211-1]
The greater part of the work for federation, either Britannic or Pan-Angle, has already been done for us. The explorer, the trader, the missionary, and the soldier have won for us the eminence from which we are now able to survey the world and form our plans. The statesmen who in our many legislative halls have laboured to fit forms of government to the needs of the governed have tested for us the material for our building and have discarded what was ill-suited to our purposes. The millions of individuals who have held true to their Pan-Angle ideals have bequeathed them to us for inspiration. It is for us to continue the work begun three centuries and more ago.
What remains to be done is to follow the path of our previous successes and avoid a repetition of our failures. These failures each nation can find often in the events of its own history without turning to the histories of other Pan-Angles; and these successes each nation can find in the histories of others, quite as well as in that of its own. Such seeking will make for a becoming modesty towards each other, and by it we shall lose nothing. We are not dealing in this matter with our inferiors or our betters. We are dealing with each other, to whom we cannot give, and with whom we cannot curry, favour. Conciliation among us is not less {212} necessary than compromise; without conciliation in the past we should not have framed successful constitutions. To-day, as in the folk-moots of our political ancestors,—" No man dictates to the assembly: he may persuade, but cannot command."[212-1] There is no room for hypocrisy among free whites who talk English. In our dealings with each other neither force nor intrigue should have place. Our history shows that if we adhere to these ideals we can succeed in co-operation.
We must avoid interfering with each other. Interference even when actuated by the best of motives leads, as Pan-Angles have repeatedly experienced, to disastrous frictions and ruptures. This knowledge we have repeatedly bought at great cost. So well has the lesson been learned, that even in cases where interference is constitutional and where circumstances seem to justify it, a Pan-Angle government first tries persuasion. The United States Federal Government may consider a Californian alien land act contrary to a United States treaty; the British Parliament may consider the Ulster agitation serious enough to justify coercion: both know that conciliation and persuasion are the safe and permanent means to employ to right whatever the wrong may be. Interference augments stubbornness; persuasion hastens co-operation.
More than this, interference leads to failure. In 1849, the British Privy Council drafted a bill for the federation of the Australian colonies. It was not made by those for whose use it was intended. {213} Its clauses did "not show any close grip of the subject, or sign that their authors realized how they could be worked in practice."[213-1] Nothing came of the plan. The only purpose it served was to illustrate the futility of one Pan-Angle nation acting for another. In 1819-1820 began the Britannic immigrant occupation of South Africa.[213-2] In 1875 the British Isles government suggested that the various colonies in South Africa should be combined.[213-3] Viewed in the knowledge of to-day it almost appears such a step would have been advisable. The best intentions must be imputed to the outside government. Had this action been advocated by the South Africans, some kind of joint government might have resulted. Since it was not, the plan was merely a source of increased hard feeling between colonists of Dutch and British descent, and is to be included with other instances of British interference which were the major causes of the long and bitter Great Boer War. Each of these nations, Australia and South Africa, when it was ready and in its own way, produced for itself a plan of common government. A Britisher in the highest administrative office in South Africa wrote in 1907: "It is a modern axiom of British policy that any attempt to manage the domestic affairs of a white population by a continuous exercise of the direct authority of the Imperial Parliament, in which the people concerned are not represented, is, save under very special circumstances, a certain {214} path to failure."[214-1] American experience goes still further. There, every community is represented in every government having legislative jurisdiction over it. Yet it has been proved advisable to leave certain spheres of legislation solely to the wishes of the community affected.
For many years the British Isles has been the Pan-Angle nation which, from its position, was most tempted to interfere with the affairs of the others. The lessons its failures set forth may be taken to heart by the younger nations as they grow in strength. Neither America, nor Canada, nor Australia, nor South Africa, nor New Zealand, nor Newfoundland can at any time in their future afford to make the mistake of trying to compel one of the six other nations. An advantage of numbers, or position, or wealth, may lie at some time with anyone of them. On that one, then, will rest the obligation of keeping its hands off the others. Particularly does this apply to that one of us whose very existence is due to its revolt against interference, but hardly less to those others of us whose more peaceful origins were made possible by an already won revolution.
Federation should be attained through familiar governmental forms, not through innovations. Burke knew his civilization's aversion to change which "alters the substance of the objects themselves, and gets rid of all their essential good as well as of all the accidental evil annexed to them," {215} whose results "cannot certainly be known beforehand." He knew his civilization's belief in reform—" a direct application of a remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops there; and if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the very worst, is but where it was."[215-1] In this re-form, the essence of our civilization—our language, our individualism, our standards of living based on land plenty—should be left unchanged. The new growth, federation, will "remedy the grievance complained of"—the danger of the extinction of our civilization.
Pending federation, the Pan-Angle nations must on no account weaken each other, and so the entire race, with war. Much faith is put, in these days, in arbitration, but on false presumptions. No so-called "international arbitration court" in existence has any authority whatsoever.[215-2] Such a body is of value only when it is giving advice to contestants who greatly desire to come to a friendly agreement, and who, for the sake of peace, are predisposed to take the "court's" advice. Even then its value is not great, for such contestants might very probably, without its aid, have come to a peaceable understanding. The Pan-Angle nations do most heartily desire peace among themselves. They are then the best calculated to find arbitration useful. The question thus arises whether some tribunal can be established on Pan-Angle soil, for the settlement of Pan-Angle inter-national {216} disputes. It would be a makeshift and powerless, until by the establishment of a common government it ceased to be inter-national, and became a potent source of justice under the Pan-Angle federation.[216-1] It is, however, a straw we well might grasp until we reach a firmer footing. The greatest advantage of an organized body for Pan-Angle arbitration is that from it might develop something more practicable, as from the Maryland-Virginia Conference at Alexandria in 1785[216-2] and as from the South African Railway Rates Conference in 1908[216-3] developed respectively the federations of the United States and South Africa.