Dear Motherland, accept the gift we give this day to thee.
The letters indicate something of the spirit of our people, and they more than touch on the “after-the-war” problems of the Empire. Both indicate the way we lose our citizens to the United States of America. And it is, of course, loss to the Empire whenever an Englishman settles in the U.S.A. Our social interchange with the United States is a snare for us. The gleam of their dollars is the Star-spangled Banner, and not the Union Jack. We do not see that, although the Americans speak a recognisable dialect of our language, they are a foreign people, with their own national interests. When a man or woman goes there to settle he is lost to us, and if in the great unrest after the war a great number of our young people set sail for “God’s own country,” it will mean that we can add the numbers of those young people to the total of our casualties. That is clear.
Then we cannot afford to imitate the ways of the U.S.A. The U.S.A. receive the discontented and rebellious of all nations in Europe—it is Europe’s safety-valve. Our Irish go there, German anti-militarists, Russian Jews and Finns, Austrian Slavs and what not. The nature of the United States is composite and its task is synthesis. The nature of our Empire is elementary and its task is to keep pure. Canada has made a mistake in opening its doors to aliens, and especially to those aliens who would stand a poor chance of passing the tests at Ellis Island. Canada behaves as if it were left behind in the struggle by America, as if she had been asleep in the past and was now making up for lost ground by any and every means. She is virtually accepting those aliens whom the U.S.A. consider not good enough to take. Through the help of Tolstoy and the Quakers the Dukhobors were dumped down on Canadian soil. They have refused to become naturalised British subjects, and have sacrificed estates to the value of over three million dollars—“in the name of the equality of all people upon earth we would not be naturalised, and we sacrificed this material fortune.” They learn no English, conform to no English rules, nourish no English sentiments, are lost to Russia, and are no use to us. The same may be said of the hundreds of thousands of other aliens we are letting in. It should be obvious that to lose British-born citizens, our own spirit, flesh and blood, in the United States, and at the same time to take those aliens who cannot pass the doctor and the immigration examination at New York, is a woeful and even ridiculous circumstance.
After the war America will be extremely rich and we extremely poor. She will be in a position to buy everything that is offered for sale. We must take care not to offer birthrights in any shape or form. That which we can legitimately sell let us sell, but that which is in the nature of an heirloom of the British people let us not be tempted to sell, no matter how high the mountain of dollars be piled on the American shore or how dazzlingly it may shine in the sunshine. I say this with no malice against the American people. They are a splendid people, and they are working out their own ideals. They are carrying out their ideals of town-planning, marriage-planning, slum-raising, park-planting, wages-raising beyond anything we dream of here. When I wrote in my book on America that we British were the dying West whereas America was the truly living West, I was taken up by British critics as if I had said something very disparaging about my own people. That was a mistake. I do not desire to see my own people a Western people, such as the Americans are, but rather a nation seated between the East and the West. Some of us fondly think ourselves Western in our ideals, but the fact is the Americans have left us far behind, and we can never catch up because we do not really believe in these ideals. But we can gain immensely by seeing America go ahead. Let us shake hands with America; she is splendid. God speed! Go on, work out your ideals, let us see you as you wish to be. Meanwhile we will go on with our own problems and the realisation of our own ideals.
With America on the West then also with Russia on the East—shake hands! Thanks to Russia, and God be with her also. Let her realise her ideals and discover what she is; we shall learn from the spectacle of her self-realisation. And meanwhile we will go on with our own problems and the realisation of our own ideals.
We who write about foreign countries are the torch-bearers to foreign progress and the means of foreign friendship. We render good service, and if our light shine well and show clear pictures it is unfair to reproach us with a wish to Russianise or Americanise or whatever it is. Our function is a legitimate one, and, far from confusing or alienating our readers, our hearts are actually with our own nation and we help our fellow-countrymen to see themselves as quite distinctive. Our minds certainly are confused by the writings and sayings of those stay-at-home folk who imagine that difference of nationality is only difference of speech and customs, and perhaps of dress, not understanding that first of all it is difference of soul and difference in destiny.
To return to the comparison of the two Empires and the consideration of the colonial letters, Mr. Anderson asks for an Imperial Commission to consider the “after-the-war” problems, and in conversation with Mr. Bonar Law I learn that such a Commission is to sit, and there is the possibility of an Imperial Parliament being formed. This ought to be taken up warmly by our people at home. I also discussed with Mr. Law the prospects of emigration after the war. There is a great unrest in the Army. Great numbers of men have one common opinion that they are not going to return to the old dull grind in factory and office after the war is over. They are going in for an open-air life, going to Canada, going to Australia, or going to take up land at home in Great Britain. The Canadians and Australians have served their home lands well by telling the men at home what it is like in the far parts of the Empire. Our men have a genuine admiration for the physique of our Colonials. The fine bodies and good spirits of these men speak for themselves, and then they are full of talk of a rich country, beautiful Nature, wildness, big chances, prosperity. It is no wonder that the Englishman wants to go there also when the war is over. There will be a great readiness to go. The question is what facilities will be given them to go? How much will it cost and how much land will they be given, and what status will they have within the Empire? Mr. Law was not inclined to give much answer to that, and he reminded me that we wanted to get some more men back to the land in our own country. The back-to-the-land movement here is, however, of little importance if we are going to look upon the whole Empire as a British unity and feel that a man on the land in Australia can be of more significance than a man on the land in Essex.
I asked Mr. Bonar Law whether he thought that our manufacturers here would be dismayed at the prospect of so many young men going to the Colonies, would they not oppose facilities being given? Would they not feel that it was necessary to keep the labour market overflowing with labour in order to keep labour cheap? In any case, would they not feel they needed to keep the men in England? The foundation of personal wealth is a plenitude of labour. The more hands employed, the richer the man at the top. Mr. Law did not think they were likely to raise objections.
The overcrowding in the United Kingdom is much greater than in France or Germany or Italy. India is also terribly over-crowded, but Canada and Australia and South Africa are practically empty. The only nation that occupies the correct amount of land proportional to its population is China. Russia has double the territory of China, and something like a third of the total population. And, thanks to cheap railway fares, the Russian population spreads quietly and naturally. After the war we must nationalise a steamship service for the use of British subjects only, and make it possible to travel anywhere in the Empire for a pound or so, paying for food according to a normal tariff. We must give emigrants privileges in our own Colonies that they would not obtain in the United States. We must set up big Imperial works, and spend time and money in development. We must not relax our rule of the seas, but go on building an ever better, ever more efficient Navy, and not underman it. We must live even more on the sea than we have done in the past, for the seas are our high roads, the connecting links of Empire. We must get out of the foolish habit of thinking of Canada and Australia and South Africa as terribly far away. It is a little world, and there is scarcely a far-away in it. We have to give to our working men, and to their children in the schools, the consciousness of belonging to a big and glorious thing rather than the consciousness of belonging to a little State that is almost played out. Let us think of Russia with her bigness, her space, her consciousness of unity, and of the large thing, and remember we have all the possibilities of health and splendour that the Russians have if we will only face our problems and do the things which are obvious to all except to those who fight in the political arena for fighting’s sake.
To recapitulate: