What is Happening in the British Empire?

LIEUT.-COLONEL DREW, the President, introduced the speaker.

SIR NORMAN ANGELL: About a year ago, a United States editor said to me that Great Britain might settle her debt to the United States by selling Canada to that country. (Laughter.) I said" "Exactly what would you get for your money? Are you quite sure that Great Britain could deliver the title?" (Laughter.) He said, "'Well, we would get Canada; don't you own Canada?" I replied, "Speaking as an Englishman with a very depleted bank balance, I should say, decidedly not-we don't; I have an impression that Canada is owned by Canadians, and by nobody else whatsoever. (Hear, hear. and laughter)-and Great Britain is not in a position to deliver the title." This was before the Statute of Westminster, and I said, "That Act of the British House of Commons does not run in Canada., and Canada is now an independent nation that belongs to a certain class of nations in the British Empire." (Applause.) I said "That is an old word that has misled you. The words 'British Empire' as used in the dictionary meaning came to an end long since. Empire is a form of political organization in which any subject Province was, in days of old, governed from the centre authority-the Imperium -and that does not describe what we call the British Empire."

Now, I am not surprised that the United States journalist thought it was feasible in some way for Great Britain to sell and to deliver the title to a piece of territory to sell part of her estate as it were, because only yesterday some of my countrymen in England, speaking on this subject, said, "Don't we own Canada?" And I have been trying to pull them out of the pitfalls into which those words, "Empire ownership" and the rest of it, seem to have caused them sometimes to fall. Of course we are not an empire in the dictionary sense at all; we are an alliance of separate and independent states, and I am glad that the word "Imperium" has passed; but I do not like the word "Independence", because we live in a world in which no one can be independent" and if we believe in being a partner we must not also talk of being absolutely independent, because the idea that civilization is made up of separate and independent individuals is a contradiction in terms. You cannot have a civilized society where everybody has a right to do as they durn please--(laughter)--still less can you have it today. There may have been a time in which independence had a meaning, in which the world was not inter-dependent, rather than made up of independencies-because this is distinctly a partnership, and the alternative to imperialism is not anarchy; the alternative to the old imperialism, is partnership, federalism on the basis of equality. (Hear, hear.) I want to concede everything that you demand in the way equality, but you must be careful not to confuse equality and partnership.

We must remember that we live in a world in which that thing won't work. For instance, it won't work on a modern motor car road. There may have been a time when it did. Now, on a modern road, with a Ford traveling 60 miles an hour, it is rather important to know what the other fellow is going to do, whether he is driving on the right hand or the left, and if you don't know that, and there is a mix-up, the discussion as to whether it was 60 miles is likely to be academic. (Laughter.)

I think that those things have a certain relationship on general principles, to what is happening in the Empire at this moment. All my life I have belonged to the Left in politics, though I am no longer in politics; but I have always differed from my friends of the Left when they became so imbued with the idea of independence that they claimed it as an inherent right, a social claim, whether that claim be made in regard to India, Ireland, Scotland or Yorkshire. In our day it is anti-social to claim and assert independence. Equality, again yes, but not independence, because independence is the exact equivalent to anarchy and chaos, and our world at this moment needs, more than any other one thing, integration, coordination, cooperation, traffic rules, that the traffic may be kept moving, that there shall not take place these disturbing periodical depressions. (Applause.)

It is a curious thing that those democrats, those who make up a democracy in which I count myself" who laud Lincoln because he was prepared to see his country drenched in blood rather than that the Union should be smashed, who felt that the future of democracy demanded the preservation of the principle of unity, and faced the great war to that end-the preservation of unity-do not hesitate also to laud the principle of independence. He did not accept the principle of independence. He saw that so apt is mankind to quarrel, so strong are the tendencies to disruption and disintegration, that if democracy were to survive he had to preserve anything calculated to consolidate the Union that had been torn in the strains of separation and war. For the same reason I say that this thing we call the British Empire should be made of equality for the different parts. I do not claim independence, for that claim is anti-social in these days of disintegration, and in the difficult task of organizing a workable world we need to preserve everything that is worth preserving, and to look for every indication of unity in these days when mankind is looking upon social independence as a workable thing.

In this Empire these tendencies to disintegrate grow. Look around Europe and you see revolution, nationalism, and their historical hatreds, and the nursing of those old hostilities and those traditional feuds that go all through, and one sees plainly that the old attitude, unless it can be checked, must divide civilization. I have said often that that type of nationalism which we see in Europe is the enemy of civilization. (Hear, hear.) Let us beware of the same thing creeping into our relationships. I have always stood for the right of Ireland to Home Rule, to Dominion Status; but what happens when you get independence? You get two new territories-physical as well as political. And now Scotland is beginning to talk about Scotland as a nation. Of course we shall have a new territory in the North. And I was sorry to hear that the other day they discovered an old lady in Cornwall who talked ancient Cornish. I said the next phase of that will be "Cornwall for the Cornish". We shall have a new territory when Wales comes, and Lancashire may make it hot too. What is the end of it? Don't you see that must mean failure, for good or evil, of all that our inventions have brought into being? Our inventions were unmistakably intended to cheapen transportation and make the peoples of the world our next-door neighbors, and when it made these things take place we began to wall off these divisions.

I take only one thing in which that sort of world will not work. I take money. If we are to have a workable money, that is a money of stable value, it must, for the sums which were paid into an insurance company ten, fifteen, twenty or thirty years ago as provision for old age, it must provide for taking out the same equivalent of what you put in. But that cannot be if we do not now organize an international world. The money purpose has already broken down. It may fall into absolute chaos, and if it does, everything that we know in the way of mechanical large scale industry will in the long run go with it. Modern industry demands a stable money, and stable money in its very essence means an international money. If our attitude is that as each occasion arises we will make rules, and that we will riot be tied slavishly to the rest of the world, that means the end of our industrial civilization.

Power will not help us. I have spoken of certain ideas and expressions of which a critic once said, "This fellow does not know how dangerous those ideas are." The remark seems to imply that we would reduce the power of the British Navy, but I did not imply that. He implied that if it was not for the British Navy the foreigners would come in here and make a bee-line for the vaults of the nation and take away our material resources, and shatter our financial structure, and that nothing but the British Navy stands between them and that result. But in the last few years foreigners have been coming to the Bank of England and have been taking away their securities. (Laughter.) What has the British Navy been doing about it? (Laughter.) The British Navy has nothing to do with these things, and could not have. Taking the illustration of the motor car again, we have to make traffic rules, whether the other fellow is going to drive his car to the right or left, or we go to smash. The alternative is very simple. We either make an international world or we shall have a world ire which my own country, at least, cannot live, and in which I think this country cannot live at any standard of life which we call civilization. You also are dependent upon stable money. The instability of that money may cause fluctuations in the price of some of your standard products. The price of Canadian wheat is directly affected by the money movements throughout the world. If those movements are uncontrolled, if they are chaotic, you will never" with all your plowing and planting, be able to get as much out of the soil as you put into it.

Now, coming to problems of the time, as an Englishman standing on Canadian soil perhaps I may be allowed to digress, not in any partisan spirit. But I would like to make a few suggestions as to whether the Imperial Conference is going to result ultimately in good or in evil; and I will, if I may, suggest one or two tests. Perhaps the first point is the matter of bargaining between the various states of the Empire. That is to say, when we make a tariff, whether in Ireland or Australia or Canada, we do not say it is entirely our affair, and no others have anything at all to do with it. The Conference at Ottawa showed that we have got a little beyond that, and that we are to say that, after all, our preferences do concern the other fellow. As a matter of simple fact, they concern him so very largely that perhaps you will be required to talk with him about it, and see whether your tariff cannot be so constructed as to injure him as little as possible, and for him to frame his tariff so as to injure you as little as possible. (Applause.) This is the beginning of the obvious discussion which tests whether the Conference at Ottawa will be a useful thing. In this world, a tariff ought to make for protection to the states that make the tariff--beginning with the states of the Empire.

The second point I would suggest is that tariff arrangements between states coining together should be of mutual benefit; if not, I would see no reason or sense in that Conference at all. If we can keep those two principles together-that tariffs will be a matter of discussion and mutual agreement, and that they will be mutually beneficial arrangements between states, it will be a very hopeful beginning.

Now, as an Imperialist I desire to say to Canada that I want the Empire--that kind of Empire-to be as large as possible. If you heard that Australia or any other Dominion had withdrawn from the Empire and ceased to be part of it, you would regret it. So would I" as you may gather from my remarks. Very well; now if a little state outside the Empire, say Scandinavia, comes to us and says, "We want to join; your club; for the purpose of economizing we want to be part of the British Empire; we will pay any subscription dues that other members pay; we will grant you every concession that others grant, if you will give us the same concessions; in other words, we want to be part of your Empire, "can you say, "No"? There is now in England a certain Peer--who shall be nameless in this connection-(laughter)-one great Imperialist who wants the Empire to be ,as small as possible, and the more that can defeat the Empire the better-because that is what it means-so that when great civilized states of a high standard of living wish to join us economically, we have to say "No", without rhyme or reason. I suggest,, with great diffidence, that that line of action would not be sanctioned by the British people-(Hear, hear, and applause)-and I want to know how the Imperialist can reconcile that Imperialism with the construction of the Empire in that way. If those two, three, four or five countries entered into mutually beneficial arrangements, and it is proposed to add a seventh, why should they not be mutually beneficial to such? (Applause.)

I have given you three tests, and if Ottawa stands those tests-I don't know whether it would or not, for the future is a little obscure-I would put this further simple test: Will the other States, knocking at the door for admission, be admitted" or refused? If not admitted, then we are not widening the area of trade; we are not breaking the barriers down; we are restricting opportunity; we are restricting the opportunity for my own country; we are creating a world in which conflict, not agreement, will increase-a world in which my own country-and I stand by Great Britain as you stand by Canada-a world in which my own country cannot support 45 or 50 millions of people on the soil of those islands. If it is true that we cannot admit others to those advantages it will mean that you are asking the poorest of the Empire to help the richer; and for that reason alone I do not believe that that arrangement will be accepted. (Hear, hear.)

Now, you see I talk with great freedom. I have tried to avoid passing any general verdict on Ottawa. I have simply suggested three tests or conditions to be made by us as individuals. If it is a beginning of agreements between state-s, after making those traffic rules of which I have spoken, that far it is good. If it is a beginning of mutual concessions for mutual advantages, so far it is good, and if that good is not limited by arbitrary barriers, it is also good. But if Ottawa is going to compel us in Great Britain to say, "We will welcome the Indian products produced on a Coolie standard of a few pence a day, but we must shut oust those products produced by workmen at a standard that is just as good as our own;" if you say those privileges are open to the Indian Coolie but are closed against those English at the mouth of the Elbe-because that is where we began looking at the conditions of a country like Great Britain, if we will be thus met with a demand of that character, and cannot for a long time obtain their acceptance, if that is the Empire, I want to say that I wish to see the Empire making arrangements that do not run counter to the great forces of our time, but those that run "with the grain" of our civilization.

We of the British Empire are supposed to have a capacity for facing facts, and there are two or three facts that I -think we should face at this moment. The system under which we have been living has for the moment broken down. I do not know whether that break-down is permanent or not. I do know that it has been a gradual failure these last ten years, a time of great anxiety to people for years, and a time of great anxiety and economic instability over the world today. That needs to be stabilized, and I have helped to be a transformer. Now, there is nothing very radical about that, for anything that is living and growing has to change,, and if society is a living and growing thing it must change, and as the world is a living and growing thing it will meet changes and transformations. I want those changes to be brought about in an orderly fashion, steadily, without violence and without hate.

There are two points about this relative evolution of our present system which I would like to point out. Here you have seen throughout Europe and the old part of the world a break-down of the parties equal to a break-down of the economic system. That break-down has not been the work of Socialists or Red agitators; not in the least. (Hear, hear.) That break-down has been due to the pursuit of policies carried through by very conservative capitalist governments. (Applause.) In other words-excuse the extreme frankness of expression in this-the modern capitalist has shown himself a very incompetent defender of modern capitalism. (Hear, hear, and applause.) It is under his aegis, under the system which he controls, that this terrific break-down has taken, place-this blizzard, to use Mr. Lloyd George's word, has come upon us. It is not now the Socialist radicals, as one Senator told us. Look across the border; there is very little Socialism there, you know-(Laughter)-and they think they may turn the edge of the storm. Capitalism there has had every opportunity everything that we associate with capitalism has had a free hand, and this break-down has not been avoided.

Let us be realistic about it. Let us ask what it is that we have got to change. In what respect has change to take place? I have already suggested one or two. I suggest that it has failed because at one essential point, like that of the stabilizing of money, there has been no planning, no organization, no international agreements. It was dependent upon the Gold Standard for keeping up the level of monetary gold. We have reduced the use of monetary gold that we have created. We have failed to see that our tariff making bears vitally upon the effective distribution of monetary gold. We have been sure when. we came forward with our isolated tariff making, each for himself, that it would have no reaction on the monetary system. It is largely the tariff making which has broken down the monetary system.

Our banks across the border have been saying for some ten years to the Europeans, "You shall pay your debts, and if you send us any more goods we shall put up the tariffs to keep them out. You must pay in gold." The result was that the United States and France, between them, accumulated about all the monetary gold in the world worth talking about. And what happened next? "You shall pay us; you have no more gold but you shall pay."-(laughter)-and a hundred million of the most intelligent people of the world have not yet seen that they were asking the impossible. (Laughter.)

Do not let us be vain-glorious about it, because we went through exactly the same thing in connection with Reparations. After the war we spoke to the Germans about our 150 billions of dollars, and we said, "You shall not dump your goods on us." Well, every one knew how much the Germans had, and if we had got every pair of ear-rings they had we would have got about one billion dollars out at the end; and I put it to my colleagues in the House of Commons, "Do you expect those people to pay?" Many suggestions were made, but one of them had a happy thought. He said, "Give me a dozen Tommies and half a dozen motor trucks and I will go to Berlin and notify the Cabinet that if the motors are not loaded before six the next morning two members of the Cabinet, to be chosen by lot, shall be shot." (Laughter.) He said, "I would soon get the shekels." I said "Yes, you have loaded your trucks and have brought that money to London; it is not gold, it is paper money which you bring to London, but what will you do with it? That money has value in only one place, and that is Germany, where surely it will buy goods; but you have laid down the principle that these goods shall not be brought into Britain, so the only thing I can see is for you to get this money back to Germany, and sit there anal drink German beer until it is all drunk up." (Laughter and applause.) It took my countrymen ten years to see that point-(Laughter)-and the French don't see it yet(Laughter)-and the American Senate has taken a solemn oath that nothing in the world will ever make them see it. (Renewed laughter.)

The education that has produced that type of mind is the education that has been produced by pastors and masters these last two generations, and has been devised, shall we say, by our capitalistic system presented to the public in a way that will give the system, which they are supposed to manage, security and stability.

This leads me very near to one of my present hobbies, that ultimately this thing can only be remedied by a larger understanding of the nature of the world in which we live-(Hear, hear)-by having education bear more definitely and more consciously than it does, by enabling the masses to understand the nature of man. and the nature of that society in which man has to pass his life. I am afraid that education does not always bear upon these points. The great need today •s to realize that we are in a situation that is something like those present during a run. on a bank. There is a prospect of the masses withdrawing their deposits, when feeling the responsibility for their families. The interest of the individual is opposed to that of the whole mass of the people. All would be safe if we could organize our own disciplines sufficiently to see that that sort of thing does not take place. We have to devise a social sense so that we shall not indulge in that way, in regard to the bank, in such a way as an excited individual would, and thus promote a crisis at the bank. What is needed is to understand enough of excited society arid what is needed to be done to stop that sort of thing. Let us see if we cannot re-shape our education a little so that those who are coming after us shall understand this thing a little better; that we shall make of this great family of ours in the Empire a simple world of free states who know how to use their freedom, who are willing to impose upon themselves several obligations, certain "don'ts", if you like. At least we in the Empire should show that !we are capable of those disciplines, that we are not victims of wild fears, and that we ought to be able to organize a workable kind of society.

I am myself a transformer of society, as I have said, transforming the old cruelty, the old violence, the old hate, showing that the new Empire, at least, has a dream; so that, beginning with the Brotherhood of Man" we shall make something more than an empty and windy freedom. Let us see that the newer generation gets such an education as will teach them to live in a scientific and not a sentimental brotherhood of man, respondent to intelligent direction, so that we may make human society, difficult as we have it, something more worthy than it has been of the wonderful mind of man. (Loud applause.)

PRESIDENT DREW expressed the thanks of the Club for the interesting address.