Other stepping-stones ready for our use are to be found in Britannic-American conferences on matters of mutual interest. In February 1908 a conference on the conservation of the natural resources of North America was held at Washington, at which three Pan-Angle nations were represented by delegates.[216-4] Some of the subjects suitable for such discussion are forests, river flowage for power or irrigation purposes, and migrating birds. If a conference were held for mutual information on sea-fisheries, all our nations might well send delegates. A similar opportunity is afforded in the urgent need of making uniform and sensible the spelling of our language. At a meeting in connection with the Conference of Education {217} Associations in London, January 5, 1914, it was stated "that an international conference should be summoned at which all parts of the British Empire and the United States should be represented."[217-1]
However great the good resulting from such conferences in relation to their stated objects, it may some day appear insignificant compared to the assistance rendered towards producing federation.
Quicker and cheaper communication is working steadily towards better Pan-Angle understanding. International postal arrangements date only from 1874, but two-cent (penny in the British Isles, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa) postage is now so general from points within to other points within the Pan-Angle world, that by far the majority of inter-Pan-Angle letters have the advantage of that rate. Land and water telegraphs by wire and wireless are steadily linking up points further and further apart, and rates are becoming cheaper. The telephone is now a common household necessity over much of the Pan-Angle world, and bids fair in time to conquer distances as effectively as do telegraph lines. Every such agency, producing a very real "closer union," is a factor in promoting Pan-Angle federation.
The cheapness and speed of travel are increasing at rates to which no bounds can reasonably be set. Steamers, on which we so largely depend as inter-Pan-Angle carriers, yearly serve more routes, are more numerous and faster. We shift easily from one country to another as business or inclination takes us. Ambassador Page has proposed that newspaper men from the British Isles and America serve an {218} apprenticeship on journalistic staffs in each other's countries.[218-1] The imperial "grand tour" of the British Isles parliamentary party, recently completed,[218-2] gave British politicians, better than would any number of voluminous reports, an opportunity to appreciate the needs and aspirations of the five other Britannic nations. The celebration of the Centenary of Peace will this year furnish innumerable similar opportunities. Every personal acquaintance of one Pan-Angle with the country of other Pan-Angles makes for the understanding that must precede federation.
The formation of a Pan-Angle federation must depend in the end on our voters who are the source of first and final appeal in our political problems. It will be achieved when they are self-persuaded that it is desirable, that is, when they have been educated to see its necessity. Only such means of education may properly be used as will open the path to self-persuasion. Among these, two readily suggest themselves. The first is the educative work that can be done by associations of those aroused to interest in the matter. The second is the educative influence of travel and sojourn of Pan-Angles in each other's countries.
Voluntary associations established by private initiative are among us recognized means of furthering reform. Through public discussion, whether printed or spoken, they have fostered many of the great movements for which we all {219} are now grateful. "Discussion is the greatest of all reformers. It rationalizes everything it touches. It robs principles of all false sanctity and throws them back upon their reasonableness. If they have no reasonableness, it ruthlessly crushes them out of existence and sets up its own conclusions in their stead."[219-1] These associations and their beliefs, if not supplying a public need, wither and die. But if the times call for them, movements are started which pass through a regular growth from insignificance and obscurity to contempt and ridicule, followed by public opposition and finally by success. Such have been the histories of the freedom of conscience, the abolition of slavery, and a host of similar triumphs. Men of like ideals associate themselves together, take a name that proclaims their tenets, and spend their time and energy and money to set forth the truth as they see it. Everyone is given a chance to learn, but no one is compelled to believe. No purpose can be so lofty, no course of action so advantageous, that it does not need expounding. The countless peace societies and the millions spent in that cause bear witness. Meeting places must be hired, literature must be printed and posted, advertising in its many forms must not be neglected. All this means sacrifice of some sort from somebody—obviously from those who have the success of the work at heart. In every Pan-Angle nation can be found plenty of organizations which are doing on a small scale in reference to some local interest just what some non-local, inter-national organization could {220} well do on a large scale for such an ideal as Pan-Angle federation. The organization should be on an inter-Pan-Angle basis, if for no other reason than to make for uniformity in its efforts and to prevent it from slipping into local points of view. As the demand for Pan-Angle federation grows, practical politics will not remain insensible to it. Then will be the time to marshal to its aid forces such as have finally established by law the present nationhood of each of us.
In this labour of education we must work openly in the presence of each other and under the scrutiny of the nations of the world. If we were Germans or Japanese, an international coup might be accomplished by diplomatic work unknown to the voters, and the affair put through with secrecy and despatch. It is vain to wish for such a style of procedure, and we have no desire, in this case, to change from the more laborious and tedious method of popular education and individual action. So to change would demonstrate that we had lost the very essence of our civilization—the initial as well as the final control of our own destinies. We must work openly, because it is one of our inestimable privileges to make up our own minds.
Not only can individual initiative accomplish this work, it can do it better than can any other method. Ideas of state interference under the guise of public ownership are making headway all over the Pan-Angle world. One industry after another, for one reason or another, is removed from the field of private endeavour, and is run for good or ill by governments. It has never been thus with our political undertakings. The spectacle of {221} a Pan-Angle government calling on all good citizens to aid in celebrating a Twenty-first of November, or a Twenty-fourth of May, or a Fourth of July is so unheard of as to be laughable,[221-1] and it is to be hoped that in the matter of Pan-Angle federation the people will be the compelling power forcing their respective governments to action.
Of the promotion of travel and sojourn of Pan-Angles in each other's countries we have one notable example. Cecil John Rhodes, wishing to instil in the minds of Britannic Pan-Angles "the advantage to the Colonies as well as to the United Kingdom of the retention of the unity of the Empire,"[221-2] and desiring "to encourage and foster an appreciation of the advantages which I implicitly believe will result from the union of the English-speaking peoples throughout the world and to encourage in the students from the United States of North America . . . an attachment to the country from which they have sprung but without I hope withdrawing them or their sympathies from the land of their adoption or birth,"[221-3] directed the trustees of his estate to establish scholarships at the University of Oxford. Each year picked men from English-speaking lands travel to England, enrol themselves in this Pan-Angle university, and there measure themselves against representatives of all their race. At the end of three years they return to their respective countries. The book {222} knowledge they have acquired could have been furnished by any one of many universities. But Rhodes' sagacity has given them infinitely more. They have lived and studied and travelled in what is truly the Mother Country of us all. They have become conscious of their fellow Pan-Angles and have made their fellow Pan-Angles conscious of them. Their understanding and sympathy is freed for all time from narrow prejudices.
The work so generously begun should be extended. Not only in the British Isles but in North America, in South Africa, and in Australasia young Pan-Angles should be brought in touch with the other portions of our race, and should see at first hand what problems require solving by us throughout the world. Not a Pan-Angle university from McGill to Dunedin, from Ann Arbor to Stellenbosch, but would welcome some exchange of students similar to the growing system of exchange professors. Not one, if it could offer scholarships to the youth of the other nations, but would have enlarged the scope of its usefulness and have grown from local to inter-national importance. Patriotic Pan-Angles by endowing such scholarships could hasten the accomplishment of the Pan-Angle federation, and thus share in ensuring the safety of every Pan-Angle nation, and in securing our civilization for the benefit of ourselves and for the peace of the world.