By-Products of Empire

PRESIDENT EAYRS introduced the speaker, who was warmly welcomed and said:-Mr. President, my Lord Bishop, and Gentlemen, I count it a very great pleasure and a very great honour to be invited to speak to members of this distinguished Club. I want to speak to you, if I may, for a little while upon what I am going to call the By-Products of Empire.

As we look back down the long corridors of history we can see in those empires which lie buried in the abyss of time the machinery of their life adapting itself to particular purposes which are well within the minds of those who were driving that machinery, and as the wheels turn and carry out the policies and programmes of those people we can see that very frequently things emerge very much removed from what they intended, sometimes the very opposite of what they intended, which yet were things of greater moment to the world than anything which they actually had in their outlook and vision.

In that great Empire of Babylon many years ago they had a number of policies of various kinds, and in that fifth century before Christ, perhaps the most interesting period of the ancient world in many respects, when Socrates was teaching in Greece and Confucius and Lao-Tse in China, and Buddha himself in India, and the Jews were in the very heart of that great city by the Euphrates in slavery, the greatest thing that was done, though little did Babylon imagine it, was to have the presence of those slaves in their midst in contact with a-1 this rich thought and civilization which was springing up in at least three different corners of the world. Babylon did not know it, or realise it, yet the thing which we remember today, the thing which lives while all her great walls and temples are buried, and can only be disconcerned in their outline from the air-the thing which lives in their life and will always live in the life of the world is something which was a mere by-product of Christianity evolved amid all that mammoth civilization of days gone by.

The same might be said of the conquests of Alexander, called the Great-unfortunately in those days they always called men great who felt it their business to conquer the rest of the world. Our ideas of greatness, thank God, have changed a great deal since then. (Hear, hear.) Alexander first crossed Greece and then Asia Minor and came to the borders of India, but some very great things, as he imagined, and as the world eventually thought, immediately followed him. But perhaps the greatest thing that he did was to leave the impress of Greek art, Greek life, Greek thought, and even Greek physique among certain tribes of India. One of the greatest authorities on china and porcelain, the keeper of that department in the South Kensington Museum in London, told me that one of the most glorious results of the campaign of Alexander the Great is to be found in Chinese pottery, and certainly had its survival there under the influence of Alexander and the passage of his army.

Rome built her roads for a particular purpose, for the transport of her legions, and they exist all over Europe. I suppose you have all heard the story of the Englishman who came to Canada, one of those who asked foolish questions(laughter)-and he wanted t

know how it was that Canada had such dreadful roads. He said, "you know, if you go to England you will find the most delightful roads, even in our little villages we have the most charming roads; now, why is it that your roads in Canada are so abominable?" The Canadian to whom he was speaking looked at him and said very coolly, "well, I guess it is that we did not happen to enjoy the benefits of a Roman occupation." (Laughter.) Not only did Rome build her roads for that purpose, which served as means of wonderful communication in the days of early Christianity, but she instituted a service of bringing corn from Alexandria to the Eternal City, and it was by that very line of cornships that the Gospel was carried, and that Paul himself made his way to his imprisonment in Rome.

All those things just remind us that the great things that empires set out to do are often not so great as the things that they do on-the-by, as we say in Scotland; things that they do without suspecting it, without knowing it; things that they do quite frequently against all their vision and all their wit.

Well, in connection with that great Empire to which we belong this important truth still remains everlastingly true. The British Empire has set out to do a great many things in her time, and some of the greatest things that she has ever done, and some of the most wonderful forces that she has called into being have resulted not only without her realizing it but against her intention.

I sometimes think that amid the wonderful things that we achieved in the war, and all the marvelous heroism, and all the great purposes and ideals which animated the people of our race, a great many things were achieved and obtained which come very near to our hearts, which stand out in everlasting glory in our vision of the world at this time. I, for one, am exceedingly glad to feel that the old Holy Land of Palestine is being administered today by those of our race who care for things for which we care; and I am, if possible, more glad even than that, that there is a certain tomb on the top of a mountain in Samoa which has passed under the British flag, and that Robert Louis Stevenson has returned to the allegiance in which he was born. (Applause.)

Now, sir, we have with us today members of the Bar of the United States of America, and I sincerely hope that they will not think that I am being impertinent when I say that they represent the greatest by-product of the British Empire. (Applause.) We certainly did not intend that--(laughter)--and in days gone by when we were taxing our American colonists, and were endeavouring to make those children who had left home contribute to the up-keep of the old farm-house we certainly did not envisage that there would arise to the south of us here a great nation with a great vision and great ideals, a nation which would go so far and achieve so much, a nation which would have such a wonderful spirit of liberty and progress, a nation which beginning as a rebellion against the British Crown, has now stiffened and broadened and grown into the greatest ally of the British people. (Hear, hear and applause.)

I suggested to judge Sutherland a few minutes ago that we had repented a number of our early follies(laughter)-and I am sure I speak for all here, and indeed for the whole British Empire, when I say that looking back on the course of that Empire there is no folly of which we repent more bitterly, and for which we desire more heartily to make amends than our treatment of the American colonies years ago. (Hear, hear.) Yet at the same time we have tried to make amends in a very small way. We have a statue of George Washington in Trafalgar Square. (Laughter). As I said to the judge, it is only a small one, but it is there -(laughter)-and what matters more than that, we have a great statue of that rugged, that magnificent, that glorious man, Abraham Lincoln, sitting looking at the Westminster Abbey, and realizing to us all the time that the great American people and we are one. (Applause.)

I remember the very first time that I visited this side of the world, now 20 years ago, being taken by some relatives in Windsor not only across to the City of Detroit but up the River to an Island which I believe -is called, colloquially, Vaulelin, and on that Island I remember being shown a little block house amongst the Indians, and being told that it was one of the homes of the earliest settlers who came into the virgin forest and the great prairies of the new world of liberty, and of power of expression and of self-possession which was impossible in the little island across the sea, and I am glad and proud to think that, towering on the one side is that great city of Detroit, flying the Stars and Stripes, and on the other side that Canadian town of Windsor, and down between them in the river on the Island there is that little block house; and I believe that on both sides they would say that out of that came the things which are deepest, things that are most real, most glorious and permanent in the civilization of both those nations which have come to possess this northern continent. (Applause.)

As we look across that river, and look to our friends on the other side, we have come to look upon them with different eyes from those that our great grandfathers turned that way, and we have come to realize that, as one of their poets has put it:

They love their land because it is their own, And scorn to give aught other reason why; Would shake hands with a king upon his throne And think it kindness to His Majesty. (Laughter.)

Another great by-product of the British Empire which I am quite sure it did not intend is that of Canadian nationhood. I have been corning here for twenty years, and I have been a Canadian by marriage for sixteen, and have seen this Dominion grow. Twenty years ago it was in a condition of what today would be almost unbelievable crudity. I have seen it extemporizing where today it enjoys the great sweep of civilization, and I have watched it on my repeated visits develop gradually more and more consciousness which is distinctively its own, which is not British, which is not American, but which is Canadian-(hear, hear); and I always feel that that is one of the things-if I may venture to say so-that those who come from the other side of the ocean ought to realize; that this is not a country which is distinctively British, it is not a country which is distinctively American; it is a country with the genius and the outlook and the consciousness which are entirely its own. (Hear, hear and applause.) And as that has developed, and Canadian citizenhood and Canadian citizenship have become more and more firmly realized, until the Governor General has become what he is indeed now literally, the Viceroy of this Country, the personal representative of the King, and Canada is no more managed from Downing Street than Downing Street is managed from Canada, if as much--(laughter)--and we have realized in this northern part of North America that we have a destiny of our own to fulfill, that we are, amongst other things, the Main Street between old Europe at the one hand and the lands of the East at the other, and more and more are likely to become one of the great highways of the world's court and life. As we have realized these things we have realized that we have a destiny of our own to fulfill, and not the least part of that destiny is that we should, just where we have been placed geographically, place ourselves more and more, holding out one hand to the Old Land over the sea, and the other hand to our neighbours across the border-(applause); and as we so live, and as we seek to unfold our own particular nationhood, we cannot fail to do the thing which is most needed in the world today, and that is, to draw the British Empire and the United States of America into closer understanding, into deeper affection and into more customary ardour for common action and common thought. (Applause.)

If there is anything which makes me, as a Britisher, and I am a hundred per cent British-feel that my countrymen are forgetting their true outlook on the world, the true well-being of the world, the greatest thing they can do for the world, is when I hear men of British birth and British patriotism belittle or deride or in any way detract from the greatness of the United States. (Hear, hear.) We do not exalt the British Empire by depreciating other people. (Applause.) We do not and never shall do anything in the world or anything great for the well-being of the world if we forget Edmund Burke's great precept, that no man and no people should ever lend themselves to the indictment of a nation. I believe that that great Canadian who has now gone to his rest, and whose friendship I may without presumption claim to have enjoyed-I refer to Dr. J. A. MacDonald-did one of the great things that needs doing, and that we who succeed him should assume as part of our burden, when he said that the North American idea, the close union in thought and mind of this land in which we are and the land across the border, and the close union of both through us, with the land across the sea which we all love, was the greatest purpose that we could set before us, and the purpose that was most fraught with good for the future well-being of the world. (Hear, hear and applause.) You and I have heard him speak of that wonderful frontier which all Europe covets if it only knew how to get it; that wonderful frontier which runs a thousand miles up the St. Lawrence, a thousand miles through the Great Lakes, a thousand miles across the vast prairie, a thousand miles out to the Pacific Coast, and not a battleship, not a gun, not a fort, but two nations living in perfect amity and confidence, respecting each other and working with each other for the well-being and happiness of mankind. (Applause.)

I say, sir, that Europe covets that frontier, and it is for us to hold up to Europe on this side of the world that ideal, to make no compromise about it, to tell Europe quite plainly that that is the way in which she should walk, and to endeavour by every means in our power to induce her to walk therein. There will be one of the greatest by-products of the British Empire, the greatest thing that British Canada has ever brought forth, if only we British people can stand with our American cousins and insist on showing the world that that is the ideal of neighbourliness and life, and inducing them to follow in our steps. (Hear, hear and applause.)

There is another by-product of the British Empire which we in Canada and our friends in the United States have realized in an extreme fashion. As the wheels of English history turn round I think nobody has quite realized the extreme conglomeration of races which went to make up our nationality. I do not know exactly how you all stand here, but know that in myself I am a perfect league of nations personified. (Laughter.) All the invasions of that little island across the sea found an invader in my ancestry. Saxon and Norman and Dane are we, and a great many other things are we. I am only proud to say that I am a son of both, and Dr. Slacter says he has discovered that I am a Highlander, and I know that there was a French smuggler somewhere in our family history. I hope you will realize that the French smuggler is responsible for what I may ever say or do in Toronto. (Laughter.) There was a French smuggler that fell in love with a French girl, and as every man should, he made his wife's country his own. (Laughter.) Therefore, you see, we are an extraordinary conglomeration, and it may be because we are such a conglomeration that we have to such a large extent solved the interracial problem in the British Empire and the United States. The one by expansion and the other by absorption have drawn into themselves almost every race and nationality known to man, and as they have drawn them in they have either fitted them into their own bloodstream or else fitted them into their appropriate and proper place in their national communal life. It seems to be that is a very great thing to have done. It is a very great thing that here in Canada we have people of French descent and sympathies living with us in harmony, perfect loyalty and perfect cooperation. (Applause.) It is a very great thing, if you read that play of Israel Zangwill's, which I once saw in London-"The Melting Pot"-to remark how people have come in from various nationalities into the United States and have gradually become a hundred per cent. American.

One of the pleasures I had in coming across in September last in the Duchess of Richmond was intercourse with one of the most remarkable men living, Dr. A. M. Rabini, of the Church of the Disciples in Massachusetts. There is a man brought up under the conditions in which Jesus Himself was brought up, but you touch that man anywhere and it is an American who will answer you, and that is one of the great things that the United States has done, and that the British Empire has done; and it is one of the great things which must be done over the world. We cannot ignore this inter-racial problem. We cannot blink it, and turn our eyes from it, for it is one of the things we have tried to do. In South America they have faced it, and I had a man from the Argentine tell me how they had faced it, and what the result had been; and we are not going to solve that problem by simply turning our backs to it, or simply by saying, "Well, of course, really, it is no affair of ours." It is an affair of ours, and now that the world is contracting as it grows older, and now that the whole of the race of mankind is living all on one street, it is impossible for us to ignore it any longer. When you have black man and white man, and red man and yellow man, you have got somehow or other to find their modus vivendi, and if that way is to be found and that problem is to be solved it will be solved by the British and the American people, who have been dealing with it for so many years, and who have by their dealing with it shown their capacity for finding a way through. (Applause.)

I cannot sit down without saying a word about two other matters. One of the great by-products of the British Empire, one of the things which we certainly did not envisage when that empire started forth on its way, was the marvelous manner in which not only every Dominion and colony but every race and religion under the Union Jack rallied to the Old Land in the hour of her peril- (applause)-; the way in which they came-red Indian, Mahommedan, Buddhist, every conceivable race and religion from the ends of the earth, very often not only at their own expense but accompanied by generous contributions to that little land across the ocean which in the hour of her danger did not call on her children in vain (hear, hear); and I venture to believe--and if I am going to be a very good Canadian I should believe-that in her difficulties in time of peace, in face of the burden which she is bearing, in the problems, many and grave, that she is trying to solve, in the path which is rough and stony, that she is trying to tread with head erect and shoulders square, that in time of peace Great Britain will find from her Dominions and Colonies and Dependencies not a less mighty love than she found in the time of war. (Applause.)

I am glad and proud to realize that the arrival of Canadian nationhood coincides with, and I believe causes, closer understanding and deeper sympathy between this Dominion and Great Britain than has ever existed within the twenty years that I have known Canada. I do not think that the Old Country and this land were ever so close together as they are today-(applause)-and by that strange paradox and contradiction which is part of our British policy, or at least part of our British nation, paradoxical as it may seen, on paper they were never so far away. I believe, also, that as these three friendsOld England and Great Britain and this new nation of Canada and the great United States-as they stand together and work out their destinies together will havc an influence which will be felt in the direction of bringing together, bringing into being that new world in which war shall be a hateful memory, and in which the works and blessings of peace shall be as a commonplace of everyday life. (Applause.)

We have had very recently a visit to this Dominion of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, and we have had his conversations with President Hoover-conversations which I believe are not primarily the outcome of a carefully studied diplomacy on either sire, but rather the outcome of an understanding of people who know and understand each other, in order to lead the world to better ways of thinking and living; and I saw the other day, with immense delight, that the Prime Minister of Canada had expressed the hope, which I sincerely trust will be justified, that in every school and in every church throughout this Dominion there will be hung in a common place for the eye of every pupil and every worshipper to see it, the text of the League Pact. (Hear, hear and applause.) Gentlemen, if Canada can set that example to the British Empire and to all the English-speaking people, and especially if Canada can set up in the churches and schools of a British Dominion that great thing that has been given to the world through an American Statesman, one of the biggest things that could possibly be achieved has been achieved before our eyes and in our generation. (Hear, hear.)

I think, sir, that there are many other by-products of the British Empire to which I could refer, but time turns its wheels with relentless force, and I can only say that I sincerely trust we shall preserve that clear outlook, that friendly demeanour, that tolerant spirit which alone marks great men and great nations. I think that one of the most magnificent things about the British people is their tolerance. If you went through the streets of London as I have done, and saw a procession of 2S0 communists marching through the city, who had just been released from jail for some offence against the law, not of a political character, I believe, followed by several thousand sympathisers; if you had seen them carrying banners with legends "A Republic for England" and "Down with this", or "Down with that", and if you had seen the stolid London bobby walking alongside to see that no one molested them-(laughter)-you would have realized where the real strength of the British people lies. (Applause.) Over and over again in London we have seen that. During the fourteen years that I lived there we had all kinds of disturbances, and always there was a good-humoured tolerance about it, and, believe me, it is their outlook on the world, it is their outlook on our own nation and the various people who compose it; it is that outlook of different sections of the Christian church, whether they be Catholic or Protestant, Presbyterian, or Unitarian, it is their outlook on man, with a big human and loving heart behind it--it is that which, under God, is going to save the world and lead us into peace, and to give us here in this Canada which we all love, and which we are all going to serve, a land of settled government, a land of just and fair renown, where freedom slowly broadens down from precedent to precedent. (Great applause.)

Horn. MR. JUSTICE RANEY expressed the thanks of the Club to Mr. Russell.