of the people also, in the wider sense, depends on the common recognition of the law of just subordination. But, whatever the ultimate effect of this sort may be, the need now is to counterbalance the excess of emotional humanitarianism with an injection of the truth-even the contemptuous truth. Let us, in the name of a long-suffering God, put some bounds to the flood of talk about the wages of the bricklayer and the trainman, and talk a little more about the income of the artist and teacher and public censor who have taste and strength of character to remain in opposition to the tide. Let us have less cant about the great educative value of the theater for the people and less humbug about the virtues of the nauseous problem play, and more consideration of what is clean and nourishing food for the larger minds. Let us forget for a while our absorbing desire to fit the schools to train boys for the shop and the counting-room, and concern ourselves more effectively with the dwindling of those disciplinary studies which lift men out of the crowd. Let us, in fine, not number ourselves among the traitors to their class who invidiæ metu non audeant dicere. . . .

It is a sound theorem of President Lowell's that popular government "may be said to consist of the control of political affairs by public opinion." Now there is today a vast organization for manipulating public opinion in favor of the workingman and for deluding it in the interest of those who grow fat by pandering, in the name of emancipation, to the baser emotions of mankind; but of organization among those who suffer from the vulgarizing trend of democracy there is little or none. As a consequence, we see the conditions of life growing harder year by year-harder for those whose labor is not concerned immediately with the direction of material forces or with the supply of sensational pleasure; they are ground, so to speak, between the upper and the nether millstone. Perhaps organization is not the word to describe accurately what is desired among those who are fast becoming the silent members of society, for it implies a sharper discrimination into grades of taste and character than exists in nature; but there is nothing chimerical in looking for a certain conscious solidarity at the core of the aristocratical class (using "aristocratical" always in the Platonic sense), with a looser cohesion at the edges. Let that class become frankly convinced that the true aim

of the State is, as in the magnificent theory of Aristotle, to make possible the high friendship of those who have raised themselves to a vision of the supreme good, let them adopt means to confirm one another in that faith, and their influence will spread outward through society and leaven the whole range of public opinion.

The instrument by which this control of public opinion is effected is primarily the imagination; and here we meet with a real difficulty. It was the advantage of such a union of aristocracy and inherited oligarchy as Burke advocated that it gave something visible and definite for the imagination to work upon, whereas the democratic aristocracy of character must always be comparatively vague. But we are not left wholly without the means of giving to the imagination a certain sureness of range while remaining within the forms of popular government. The opportunity is in the hands of our higher institutions of learning, and it is towards recalling these to their duty that the first efforts of reform should be directed. It is not my intention here to enter into the precise nature of this reform, for the subject is so large as to demand a separate essay. In brief, the need is to restore to their predominance in the curriculum those studies that train the imagination, not, be it said, the imagination in its purely æsthetic function, though this aspect of it also has been sadly neglected, but the imagination in its power to grasp in a single firm vision, so to speak, the long course of human history and of distinguishing therein what is essential from what is ephemeral. enormous preponderance of studies that deal with the immediate questions of economics and government inevitably results in isolating the student from the great inheritance of the past; the frequent habit of dragging him through the slums of sociology, instead of making him at home in the society of the noble dead, debauches his mind with a flabby, or inflames it with a fanatic, humanitarianism. He comes out of college, if he has learnt anything, a nouveau intellectuel, bearing the same relation to the men of general education as the nouveau riche to the man of inherited manners; he is narrow and unbalanced, a prey to the prevailing passions of the hour, with no feeling for the majestic claims of that within us which is unchanged from the beginning. In place of this excessive contemporaneity we shall give a larger share of time and honor to the

The

hoarded lessons of antiquity. There is truth in the Hobbian maxim that "imagination and memory are but one thing"; by their union in education alone shall a man acquire the uninvidious character of those broadening influences which come to the oligarch through prescription-he is molded indeed into the true aristocrat. And with the assertion of what may be called a spiritual prescription he will find among those over whom he is set as leader and guide a meas

ure of respect which springs from something in the human breast more stable and honorable and more conformable to reason than the mere stolidity of unreflecting prejudice. For, when everything is said, there could be no civilized society were it not that deep in our hearts, beneath all the turbulences of greed and vanity, abides the instinct of obedience to what is noble and of good repute. It awaits only the clear call from above.

THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS [From a speech made by Lieutenant-General The Rt. Hon. J. C. Smuts, commanding the British forces in East Africa, at a banquet given in his honor by the members of the two Houses of

Parliament, May 15, 1917]

One of the by-products of this war has been that the whole world outside of Europe has been cleared of the enemy. Germany has been swept from the seas, and from all continents except Central Europe. Whilst Germany has been gaining ground in Central Europe, from the rest of the world she has been swept clean; and, therefore, you are now in a position-almost providentially brought to this position-that once more you can consider the problem of your future as a whole. When peace comes to be made you have all these parts in your hand, and you can go carefully into the question of what is necessary for your future security and your future safety as an Empire, and you can say, so far as it is possible under war circumstances, what you are going to keep and what you are going to give away.

That is a very important precedent. I hope when the time comes-I am speaking for myself, and expressing nobody's opinion but my own-I feel when the time comes for peace, we should not bear only Central Europe in mind, but the whole British Empire. As far as we are concerned, we do not wish this war to have been fought in vain. We have not fought for material gain, or for territory; we have fought for security in the future. If we attach any value to this group of nations which compose the British Empire, then we, in settling peace, will have to look carefully at our future safety and security, and I hope that will be dore, and

that no arrangement will be made which will jeopardize the very valuable and lasting results which have been attained.

That is the geographical question. There remains the other question-a very difficult question of the future constitutional relations and readjustments in the British Empire. At a luncheon recently given by the Empire Parliamentary Association I said, rather cryptically, that I did not think this was a matter in which we should follow precedents, and I hope you will bear with me if I say a few words on that theme, and develop more fully what I meant. I think we are inclined to make mistakes in thinking about this group of nations to which we belong, because too often we think of it merely as one state. The British Empire is much more than a state. I think the very expression "Empire" is misleading, because it makes people think as if we were one single entity, one unity, to which that term "Empire" can be applied. We are not an Empire. Germany is an Empire, so was Rome, and so is India; but we are a system of nations, a community of states and of nations far greater than any empire which has ever existed; and by using this ancient term we really obscure the real fact that we are larger and that our whole position is different, and that we are not one nation, or state, or empire, but are a whole world by ourselves, consisting of many nations and states, and all sorts of communities under one flag. We are a system of states, not only a static system, a stationary system, but a dynamic system, growing, evolving all the time towards new destinies.

Here you have a kingdom with a number of Crown colonies; besides, you have large protectorates like Egypt, which is an empire in itself-which was one of the greatest

empires in the world. Beside that, you have great dependencies like India-an empire in itself, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, and we are busy there trying to see how East and West can work together, how the forces that have kept the East going can be worked in conjunction with the ideas which we have evolved in Western civilization for enormous problems within that state. But beyond that we come to the so-called Dominions, a number of nations and states almost sovereign, almost independent, who govern themselves, who have been evolved on the principles of your constitutional system, now almost independent states, and who all belong to this group, to this community of nations, which I prefer to call the British Commonwealth of Nations. Now, you see that no political ideas which we have evolved in the past, no nomenclature, will apply to this world which is comprised in the British Empire; any expression, any name, which we have found so far for this group has been insufficient, and I think the man who would discover the real, appropriate name for this vast system of entities would be doing a great service not only to this country but to constitutional theory.

The question is, How are you going to provide for the future government of this group of nations? It is an entirely new problem. If you want to see how great it is you must take the United States in comparison. There you find what is essentialone nation, not perhaps in the fullest sense, but more and more growing into one; one big state, consisting of subordinate parts; but whatever the nomenclature of the United States Constitution, you have one national state over one big, contiguous area. That is the problem presented by the United States, and for which they discovered this federal solution, which means subordinate governments for the subordinate parts, but one national Federal Parliament for the whole.

Compare with that state of facts this enormous system comprised in the British Empire of Nations all over the world, some independent, living under diverse conditions, and all growing towards greater nations than they are at present. You can see at once that the solution which has been found practicable in the case of the United States probably never will work under our system. That is what I feel in all the empires of the past, and even in the United States the effort has been towards forming

one nation. All the empires that we have known in the past and that exist today are founded on the idea of assimilation, of trying to force different human material through one mold so as to form one nation. Your whole idea and basis is entirely different. You do not want to standardize the nations of the British Empire. You want to develop them into greater nationhood. These younger communities, the offspring of the Mother Country, or territories like that of my own people, which have been annexed after various vicissitudes of warall these you want not to mold on any common pattern, but you want them to develop according to the principles of self-government and freedom and liberty. Therefore your whole basic idea is different from anything that has ever existed before, either in the empires of the past, or even in the United States.

I think that this is the fundamental fact which we have to bear in mind-that the British Empire, or this British Commonwealth of nations, does not stand for unity, standardization, or assimilation, or denationalization; but it stands for a fuller, richer, and more various life among all the nations that compose it. And even nations who have fought against you, like my own, must feel that they and their interests, their language, their religions, and all their cultural interests are as safe and as secure under the British flag as those of the children of your household and your own blood. It is only in proportion as that is realized that you will fulfil the true mission which you have undertaken. Therefore it seems, speaking my own individual opinion, that there is only one solution, that is the solution supplied by our past traditions of freedom, self-government, and the fullest development. We are not going to force common governments, federal or otherwise, but we are going to extend liberty, freedom, and nationhood more and more in every part of the Empire.

[General Smuts now speaks of the importance of the hereditary kingship as the symbol of unity in the Empire, and of the need of a further development of common institutions, such as an Imperial Cabinet, called together from all parts of the Empire at least once a year to determine a common policy. He then continues.]

I am sure that the after-effects of such a change as this, although it looks a simple change, are going to be very important, not

only for this community of nations, but for the world as a whole. Far too much stress is laid upon instruments of government. People are inclined to forget that the world is getting more democratic, and that forces which find expression in public opinion are going to be far more powerful in the future than they have been in the past. You will find that you have built up a spirit of comradeship and a common feeling of patriotism, and that the instrument of government will not be the thing that matters so much as the spirit that actuates the whole system of all its parts. This seems to me to be your mission. You talk about an Imperial mission. It seems to me this British Empire has only one mission, and that is a mission for greater liberty and freedom and selfdevelopment. Yours is the only system that has ever worked in history where a large number of nations have been living in unity. Talk about the League of Nations-you are the only league of nations that has ever existed; and if the line that I am sketching here is correct you are going to be an even greater league of nations in the future; and if you are true to your traditions of selfgovernment and freedom, and to this vision of your future and your mission, who knows that you may not exercise far greater and more beneficent influence on the history of mankind than you have ever done before.

In the welter of confusion which is probably going to follow the war in Europe you will stand as the one system where liberty to work successfully has kept together divers communities. You may be sure that the world such as is surrounding you in the times that are coming will be very likely to follow your example. You may become the real nucleus for the world-government for the future. There is no doubt that is the way things will go in the future. You have made a successful start; and if you keep on the right track your Empire will be a solution of the whole problem.

AMERICA AND ENGLAND

ARTHUR J. BALFOUR

[An address given at a dinner of the American Society, London, July 4, 1917]

On this anniversary in every part of the world American citizens meet together and renew, as it were, their vows of devotion to the great ideals which have animated them. All the world admires, all the world sym

pathizes with the vast work of the great American Republic. All the world looks back upon the one hundred forty-one years which have elapsed since the Declaration of Independence and sees in that one hundred forty-one years an expansion in the way of population, in the way of wealth and power, material and spiritual, which is unexampled in that period, and, as far as I know, in the history of the world.

We of the British race, who do not fall short of the rest of the world in our admiration of this mighty work, look at it in some respects in a different way, and must look at it in a different way, from that of other people. From one point of view we have surely a right to look at it with a special satisfaction, a satisfaction born of the fact that, after all, the thirteen colonies were British colonies; that the thirteen colonies, in spite of small controversies, grew up, broadly speaking, under the protection of England; that it was our wars, the English wars with Spain in the sixteenth century, with Holland in the seventeenth century, and with France in the eighteenth century, which gave that security from external European attack which enabled those thirteen colonies to develop into the nucleus of the great community of which they were the origin.

We British may also surely, without undue vanity, pride ourselves on the fact that the men who founded the great American Republic, the men whose genius contrived its constitution, their forefathers who, struggling in the wilderness, gradually developed the basis of all that has happened since, were men speaking the English language, obeying and believing in English laws, and nourished upon English literature; and although we may say that the originality and power and endurance were theirs, they were men of our own race, born of the same stock, and to that extent at least we may feel that we have some small and not insignificant part in the great development which the world owes to their genius, courage, and love of liberty.

In that sense we may well look with peculiar pride and satisfaction upon this great anniversary. There is, of course, another side to the question. The Fourth of July is the anniversary of the separation, the final political separation-not, thank God, the final separation in sentiment, in emotion, or in ideal-but the final political separation between the thirteen colonies and the Mother

Country. We of the Mother Country cannot look back on that event as representing one of our successes. No doubt there was something to be said, though perhaps it is not often said, for those on this side of the Atlantic who fought for unity, who desired to preserve the unity of the Empire. Unity is the cause for which the American people have sacrificed rivers of blood and infinite treasure.

I am not going into ancient history, but the mistake we made-an almost inevitable mistake at that particular period of the development of the history of the world-was in supposing that unity was possible so long as one part of the Empire which you tried to unite, speaking the same language, having the same traditions and laws, having the same love of liberty and the same ideals, would consent to remain a part of the Empire except on absolutely equal terms. That was a profound mistake, a mistake which produced a great schism and produced all the collateral, though I am glad to think subordinate, evils which followed on that great schism.

All I can say in excuse for my forefathers is that, utterly defective as the colonial policy of Great Britain in the middle of the eighteenth century undoubtedly was, it was far better than the colonial policy of any other country. Imperfectly as we conceived the kind of relations that might, or could, bind the colonies to their Mother Country, thoroughly as we misconceived them, we misconceived them less than most of our neighbors.

I went on Monday last to the ceremonial at Westminster Abbey in which the fiftieth anniversary of the Constitution of Canada was.celebrated. There is a great difference between fifty years and one hundred fortyone years. It took us a long time to learn the lesson that if you want to make an empire of different widely separated communities of the British race you must do it on terms of absolute equality. We have learnt the lesson and in our own way we are now carrying out a task as great, as momentous as-even more difficult than-fell to the great and illustrious framers of the American Constitution. We are endeavoring to carry out by slow degrees an Imperial Constitution which shall combine this absolute equality of different communities with the machinery for the perpetual attainment of common Imperial ends.

But that great experiment was begun in

its fulness only fifty years ago, within my lifetime. It will take the lifetime of many generations of statesmen all over the world in this great and scattered Empire to bring it to a full and successful fruition. It is impossible not to speculate as to how many ills would have been spared us if in 1776 those who preceded us could have foreseen the future and understood wherein the true path of political wisdom lay. Many people have plunged in endless speculations as to what would have happened if there had been no violent division between the two great sections of our people. I do not follow them in their speculations. No man can do so. No man can say what would have happened if a country which has now one hundred millions of population, with infinite resources and admirable organization, had never been formally separated from these small islands. But this at all events would have happened: the separation, if and when it had occurred, would have been a friendly separation.

There would never have been a memory of the smallest kind dividing the feelings of those, every one of whose emotions moved in the same key, to be directed towards the same end. That would have been a great gain. It is a loss to us in this country. I almost venture to say it might have been in some respects a loss to those of you, the great mass of my audience, who own a different allegiance. It would have been an infinite gain if there had been no memory in either of the two nations which pointed to sharp divisions, to battles lost and won, with all the evils of war, with all the evils of defeat, with all the evils, almost as great, of victory, if any sting or soreness remained behind.

If I rightly read the signs of the times, a truer perspective and a more charitable perspective is now recognized and felt by all the heirs of these sad and ancient glories. Heaven knows I do not grudge the glories of Washington and his brother soldiers. I do not shed tears over the British defeat which ended in the triumphant establishment of the American Republic. I do not express any regrets on that subject. My only regrets are that the memories of it should carry within them the smallest trace of bitterness on your side, but it should be a triumph seen in its true perspective, and by this true perspective seen in such a way that it does not interfere with the continuity of history in the development of free insti