Meanwhile no vision of future Pan-Angle safety should blind anyone of us to his country's present needs. In the interim before federation, we must so strengthen each of our respective nations as best to weather the storm of adversity should it {223} burst upon us before co-operation is secured. Simultaneously with the recession to home waters of the British Isles fleet, the younger Britannic nations are taking appropriate steps to ensure their separate interests. This is an evidence that each recognizes danger. Each assumes that these defensive efforts are not induced by the fear of other Pan-Angles. This is no place to discuss the compulsory military service already established in New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, nor to suggest that it would not be needed were Pan-Angle federation already an accomplished fact. Nor is this a suitable occasion to discuss the policies, strengths, or weaknesses of separate Britannic or Pan-Angle navies. America must be equal to the emergency of defending all Pan-Angles who would seek its protection if the British Isles fleet were to suffer a serious setback. Wisely, America and Canada waste no Pan-Angle funds in fortifications on their long boundary or in war vessels on the Great Lakes. But they should both maintain on salt water navies, which they can use for the joint interests of Pan-Angles. Canada and America may soon need to co-operate with Australasia in solving the problems of the Pacific.[223-1] Pan-Angle nations may severally make alliances with foreign powers for the purpose of protecting us all. One of them has already done so.[223-2] But peoples who are strong enough make no foreign alliances.
As we work towards federation we must not be {224} discouraged at our slow rate of visible progress. For "slow thought is the ballast of a self-governing state."[224-1] The growth of the federal idea may be none the less vigorous because its fruitage appears long delayed. These pages abound with examples of the fact that we are slow to move politically. Were it otherwise, the autonomous nations of the Britannic world would long since have had representation in some common parliament, would have established a single final court of appeal, and a common citizenship; an overburdened British Parliament would no longer legislate on English municipal drainage, affairs of the dependencies, and questions of inter-Pan-Angle concern. As it is, the five younger Britannic nations, realizing tardily that the British navy no longer adequately protects them, have not as yet bestirred themselves to effect more cohesive and coherent political relations with each other, and between themselves and the British Isles. America, astride the Western Hemisphere, in her own estimation secure against invasion, is taken up with internal development, and but seldom, even since the last Pan-Angle war with Spain, looks out at the increasing pressure beyond her borders.
We move slowly. Pan-Angle federation is still a dream. But no one can foresee how rapidly external pressure may turn dreams into practical politics. The federation of the Pan-Angles may be forced upon us—ready or not. Or we may find some day that it is too late to federate.
Our method of combining, the distribution of powers between the existing governments and the {225} new government, it is not here necessary or appropriate to discuss, other than to acknowledge that our history confesses that federation is the present ideal of government of this civilization. In other instances of suggested closer union, "The advocates of national consolidation have been constantly subjected, as everyone familiar with current discussion knows, to two diametrically opposite forms of criticism. They are vigorously reproached . . . for not stating in detail the method by which their purposes are to be accomplished; they are ridiculed . . . as people who aim at binding together by means of a 'cut and dried plan' an Empire which has hitherto depended upon slow processes of growth for its constitutional development."[225-1] Enough that in our previous separate histories we have had constitutional conventions to draw up both national and state constitutions. Many men who have taken part in such conventions are now living. What we have acquired a habit of doing on a large scale, we can do again on a larger scale. Such representatives can construct, for submission to our voters, a framework of federal Pan-Angle government.
With the voters of the seven Pan-Angle nations rest the decisions of when and how our co-operation is to be accomplished. That it is to be accomplished many now earnestly believe. And of it many can now say, as did Washington in the American Constitutional Convention: "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair." Before that future constitutional convention can have been accomplished, men will have {226} gathered together the wisdom of the race, and will have drawn up a constitution better than any now in use. Voters from the ends of the earth will discuss what our governmental framework should be, and, although our statesmen will act the major parts, we may agree with Burke: "I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business."[226-1]
What is desirable in this federation to preserve ourselves from the menace of other civilizations? How shall we balance our powers to ensure freedom to the individual and freedom to local groups to follow their individual yearnings with safety to them and to us all? How shall we bind ourselves for that all-time, the indefinite future, so that we shall be gladly bound, and yet be freemen still? "If, . . . in the famous words of Lincoln, we as a body in our minds and hearts 'highly resolve' to work for the general recognition: by society of the binding character of international duties and rights as they arise within the Anglo-Saxon group, we shall not resolve in vain. A mere common desire may seem an intangible instrument, and yet, intangible as it is, it may be enough to form the beginning of what in the end can make the whole difference."[226-2]
[207-1] A. L. Burt, Imperial Architects, Oxford, 1913, p. 86.
[209-1] A. L. Burt, Imperial Architects, Oxford, 1913, p. 125.
[210-1] Richard Jebb, Colonial Nationalism, London, 1905, p. 336: "The imperial city shall lose her pride of place. In another seagirt isle, by the margin of the Pacific. . . . sleeps a fair city." According to Mrs. Henshaw, F.R.G.S., in United Empire, London, January 1914, p. 80, Vancouver Island was named by Sir Francis Drake, 1579, New Albion.
[210-2] A résumé of projects for Britannic federation is given in A. L. Burt, Imperial Architects, Oxford, 1913, pp. 152-195; the necessity of, and possible transitional stages on the way towards, federation are discussed, ibid., pp. 196-225.