II. Rivalry of Empire.—Whatever be the direct issue of the war with Germany, one indirect result seems certain: England will have more empire, whilst Germany will have less, and Russia will not lose anything. Two great empires will emerge more clearly, facing one another because of the dispersal of the German ambition. There seems to be only one possibility of German extension, and that lies in the chance of Germans and Austrians turning on their own allies and absorbing Bulgaria and Turkey. But that chance must be considered remote to-day. The Russian and the British Empires will stand facing one another in friendly comparison. The Russian Empire is self-supporting, it has no need to import the necessities of life—food, fuel, raiment; whereas we could support ourselves, but do not, not having reconciled our self-hostile commercial interests. For many a long day Russia will export for British consumption corn, butter, eggs, sugar, wool, and wood, to say nothing of other things. And when at last we succeed in making our own Empire independent, the Russians will eat their butter themselves and there will be more white bread on the peasant’s table. It will be no calamity for Russia.
I was speaking on the future of the Russian Empire at one of our leading Conservative clubs in London last winter, and I was surprised to note a very important feeling of opposition toward Russia. Those who were interested in manufactures wanted the tariff against British goods reduced, and those who were Imperialist in spirit felt a certain jealousy and suspicion of the Russian Empire. Several speakers warned Russia that she had better give up the dream of having Constantinople—it would be bad for her health if she were to have it. But the most significant utterance came from an ardent tariff reformer, who did not know how far love of Russia was compatible with love of the British Empire, for more Russian grain coming to us meant less Canadian grain, and so on. If we gave Russia any preferential treatment as regards her exports to us, we handicapped our own colonies. We ought to give our colonies preferential terms, but how would the Russians feel if we asked for reduced tariffs for the import of our manufactured goods into Russia while at the same time we put a tax on the produce they sent to us. That problem is a serious one, and it cannot be doubted that the best policy for us is to make ourselves self-dependent as an Empire whatever it may cost us in foreign favour. Russia must not misunderstand our efforts to consolidate the Empire, and I do not think she will. The diminution in our import of food-stuffs from Russia will be gradual, and will be made up partially by the increased import of other things which Russia has in superabundance. Yet even as regards ores and mineral products we have to learn to be self-supporting. The war itself, which shuts us off from Russia and throws us upon our own resources, has sent us to our own colonies. We are beginning to find in the Empire not only our food, but also the raw materials required for our products. Take, for instance, the case of asbestos. The only first-class quality of asbestos in the world comes from the Urals, and it is a product of great value industrially. During the war it has been very difficult to get it from Russia. The result has been that we have found a very good though still inferior quality in Rhodesia, and may quite conceivably obtain all our best supplies from that colony in time, the lower grades coming from Canada, which begins to have a great output. But our tendency to be self-dependent will tend to rid Russia of many exploiting foreign companies, and for that the Russian people will be thankful. They want to experience what gifts they have for doing things for themselves.
III. The Trade Treaty.—Russia will be so much in debt to us financially at the end of the war that there will be a tendency to regard her as an insolvent liability company possessing valuable assets. Some of our business men may want to treat her as such and appoint a trustee, so to say. There is a movement to inflict upon Russia a trade treaty similar to that, or even more humiliating than that which Germany called upon her to sign. The bond of friendship with Russia cannot be a commercial halter round her neck. She would quickly resent foreign financial control, no matter from what quarter it might be exercised. Russia will be all but bankrupt after the war, and all that she will have lost will have been lost for the common cause. We should be generous to her and see what can be done, not to tie her and bind her industrially and financially, but for us all. Russia herself is ready to make a kindly treaty providing us with real advantages over Germany, but she could not make a treaty whereby arrangements would be made for the paying off of her financial war debts to her allies.
IV. The Basis of Friendship.—The basis of friendship with Russia is not really trade, and no provision needs to be made to make a trade basis. We had plenty of trade with Germany or Germany with us, and that did not make for friendship. On the contrary, the question of trade and of haggling over money is almost certain in the long run to lead to estrangement, or, at least, mutual dis-esteem. There has been a growing trade, but that has not led to the growing friendship. Friendship has been founded on real mutual admiration. We like the Russians, and they like us. The positive side of Russia profoundly interests us. Of course, we are not vitally interested in the negative side, the rotten conditions of life in certain classes, the faults of Russia, the seamy side of the picture. We are thoroughly aware of the ugliness of the negative side of our own life, and we would ask—do not judge us by that, that is not England. Similarly, in Russia we are interested in beautiful and wonderful Russia, in Holy Russia, not in unholy Russia. This positive side is comparatively unrealised here, for gossip and slander make more noise than truth, but in it is a great treasure both for Russia and for ourselves in friendship. On the whole the prospects are good.
APPENDIX II
THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE
THE moment of peace will be the moment of reconsideration. We shall want to know where we all stand, and we shall want to face the facts—financially, individually, imperially. We shall want to know what we have got, what we owe, what sort of empire we have to make or mar in the succeeding years, what are its resources, what its possibilities, and ours. One may remark, in passing, what very good work is being done by the Confederation of the Round Table.[F] The calculation is exercising many patriotic British minds. First of all be it remarked, in order to remove misconceptions, we British people are not by any means the most numerous white people. We have in our Empire something like 63 million whites, whereas Russia has at least 140 million, Germany has 65 million, and the United States have 82 million of mixed race. We compare favourably with the United States because we are homogeneous and much more calm in soul, and favourably with Germany because she has no land for expansion, though it must be remembered that if Austria and Germany should unite, the Germans would have almost as large a white population as Russia, and certainly a very much more active one. There remains Russia, with its enormous population and its astonishingly extensive territory. Russia has ample room for ten times her present population, and she has it at her back door, as it were. She has no oceans to cross. The railway goes all the way or can go all the way from Petrograd to the uttermost ends of her earth. She has also calm, and can develop without worry. As an empire, compared with ours, she has tremendous advantages. Her people are not impatient to be rich, the strain of her race is not confused through foreign immigration, she is shut off from mongrelising influences, and tends to grow with pure blood and a clear understanding of her own past and her own destiny. She has less chance of making mistakes. And, as I have said, her problems are much simpler. It is not difficult to keep the stream of colonisation moving into the emptiness of Asia when the railways are so good as to carry one six thousand miles for thirteen roubles, a little over a sovereign.
Our younger politicians have got to decide what they are working for—trade, or the Empire, or the people, or the individual. They must affirm a larger policy than has been affirmed heretofore, a world policy, and they must not scorn the lessons which Germany has taught them: the necessity to be thorough, to have large conceptions, and to work for the realisation of these large conceptions rather than potter about doctoring the little-English constitution here and giving a little funeral there. We teach our children a very foolish little proverb: that if we look after the pence the pounds will look after themselves. That is the opposite of the truth, which is, that if we look after the pounds we need never worry our heads about the pennies. If we nationalised our ocean-transit, we should not need to insure our working men against unemployment. If we scheduled the enormous tracts of land available for culture in the Empire, we should not need to wage war with the landowners in Great Britain.
Our present Colonial Minister, Mr. Bonar Law, has risen to the front as the political leader of our Conservative and Imperialist party. He does not seem to love party strife, and he has, perhaps, found a permanent post at the Colonial Office. He is the next man of importance after Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, and though by no means so great a man, he is an admiring follower of the great Imperialist. Whatever we may think of the merits of Free Trade and Protection, Chamberlain was undoubtedly right in his larger conception of a unified British Empire, a Zollverein. And the Liberals who opposed him and confused the issue were merely opportunists. They were not concerned to find what they could agree with in his proposals. They merely fought him to beat him and step into his shoes politically. The riff-raff of political opportunists set on him, and he was forced to shed one of his great illusions, a trust in the common sense of the people. Mr. Bonar Law is his successor, and we wish him well. He might well carry his office out of the arena of party politics and sit at the Colonial Office whatever wind were blowing. For Imperial Policy must have continuity if it is to be successful.
England must hope and pray that Mr. Law has given up mere politics. We are thoroughly sick of the bad-tempered quarrelling and malicious fighting of the heads of the parties. Even a first-rate man is ninth-rate when he is quarrelling, and a quarrel among politicians is always a quarrel among ninth-rate politicians. Political genius likes affirmation and agreement. The task of Mr. Bonar Law is to think about the Empire and gain consciousness of its true destiny; it is not to think out devices in political antagonism. As a nation we demand he give his whole time and the cream of his intellect to the positive task of giving to every citizen of the Empire the consciousness of the large thing. He will be attacked; curs will bark at him; the Germans and German Jews will try and stir up the uneducated against him; there will be all manner of insinuations. But he need never reply or attempt to defend himself. The nation and the Empire will back him calmly. There is a splendid Russian tale of a prince climbing a mountain to obtain a bird, and all the stones behind him shout abuse after him. He is safe on his quest on this condition only, that he does not turn round and listen, or draw his sword to attack. If he turn he will change to a stone himself. The point is, we are going to be more in need of great men once this war is over than we ever were before—of great men with big ideas, faith that they can be realised, and that calm of spirit which is the greatest strength.
If Mr. Bonar Law is not great enough, or if he’d rather continue in the political arena, there is another man for the post, and that is Lord Milner. Lord Milner strikes one as the greater man. The Empire is his one idea. He thinks largely—his imagination takes him in vast sweeps over the surface of the Empire. He has dignity, is a powerful speaker, and a clear thinker on Imperial matters. His weakness is a certain aloofness or reserve, an ambassadorial manner, and one is not quite sure what is behind it. Mr. Bonar Law, on the other hand, is unscreened; he is familiar, even domestic in his manner. Probably what Mr. Law has to guard against is doing things in small parcels, doing branch things rather than root things, whereas Lord Milner may give offence occasionally by a lack of consideration for other people’s feelings—want of tact, in fact. In any case they are both men on whom the eyes of the nation rest. Lord Milner has sent me an extremely interesting letter which had been addressed to him by a number of British citizens who have become lost to the British Empire. By his kind permission I reproduce it: