England's Place Among the Nations

Mr. President and Gentlemen,

My subject is "England's Place Among the Nations," and I understand you are, in the coming weeks, to have similar addresses on Scotland and Ireland. The average Englishman is not a joker. The New York Outlook jibes at the London Spectator because of its serious tone. But as a matter of fact, jokers have never become, and remained, great leaders. It was not the Cavalier, with his wit, puns, quips, and jokes, but the earnest Puritan who conquered, colonized, and ruled. England cannot be treated, even in a talk, of her place among the Nations. with that sparkle, wit, and humour which lesser nations inspire in their writers and speakers. When we consider the English people we are prone to self-conceit. But our race fortune was made for us by our fathers, so that in indulging in congratulations we are honouring our heroic sires.

England is great because of the blood of her people. England will never be great, like France under Bonaparte, because of the greatness of any once man. England's greatness has not depended, as many nations have, on a single autocrat, or even on a single Parliament. Neither does it depend on any one material thing. A nation depending on arms alone must crumble. A nation depending on a constitution alone will outgrow it, and end in revolution. In 1859, Matthew Arnold said: "The French will always be able to beat any number of Germans who come into the field against them." Matthew Arnold forgot that even armies depend on the character of their individual units. England is great because of the character, the high average, of her individual units. I said that England is great because of the blood of her people.

An Englishman is a composite--a composite made up of the adventurous and the daring of great nations.

The Emperor Claudius, in A.D. 43 began the conquest of little England. It took the mighty Roman Empire 4o years to conquer England. Then for 500 years some of the daredevils of the Roman Empire, lived, married, worked, and died in England. So that there is a strain of the world-conquering Roman in English blood. After a time, because of her fine farms, cattle, sheep and industries, England was invaded by the border Scotch. England invited the Saxons over to help her drive back the hungry Scots. The Saxons did so, but as a reward kept England for themselves. Thus the adventurers of Germany settled, worked, married, and died in England. So that there is a strain of German blood in Englishmen. Then came the invasion from Denmark. And the freebooters of Denmark settled, and inter-married with the English, thus giving Englishmen a 'strain of Scandinavian blood. Then came the chivalry of Normandy. And the Normans remained, inter-married, and became incorporated into the sober all-conquering race. Add to this inter-change of her blood with the great nations the fact that all the English counties along the sea-coast infermarried with the nations doing trade with England. One of the proofs that it is this composite nature of the Englishmen to which they owe their greatness, is seen in the fact that the counties of England open to the sea are the ones which have produced most of the great men of English Literature, the Navy, Army, Parliament, and Industry.

In what things has England proven herself in advance of most of the nations? First, in the social and economic emancipation of her people. The social emancipation of the wage-earning people of England is rapidly taking place. The old forms are preserved. But the real power in England has really passed into the hands of the people. There are more wage-earners at this moment in the Parliament of Great Britain representing England than at any moment of England's history. The present political fight in England will result in the overwhelming victory of the people. The victory will be tempered by self-restraint. The titled wearer of the coronet will accept the situation. He sees clearly, that they, the people, must increase while the aristocracy must decrease.

Travellers in the Alps, sometimes looking down, see copious showers on the valleys. But not a drop on the thirsty heights. So our English aristocracy have seen for years the showers of social blessing descend on those socially below them. In this conflict they will live to look again end add their blessing. It was because the French aristocracy could not do this that France had the Revolution. We must never forget that some of the foremost leaders of the people in their struggles for social and economic emancipation in England have come from amongst the hereditary peers of England. The hereditary peers themselves are beginning to see the folly of making heredity, alone, the condition of advancement in the Nation. In fact England has had a great history because she has frequently set aside the hereditary principle. Alfred the Great is England's greatest King. But Alfred the Great was not the direct heir. He succeeded his brother, Ethelred, though his brother had children living. The law of England then permitted the nation to choose from the Royal House the one most fitted to reign.

England is even more democratic than America. While America laughs at heredity as a ground of social distinction she has accepted and built into her usages the worship of plutocracy. Every movement of a United States plutocrat is recorded in the leading papers; every detail of his daughter's courtship and of her quarrels with her lover is described. So strong is the growing democracy of England that they refuse to allow the great trusts which make plutocrats even to get a foothold there. A couple of years ago a $60,000,000 soap trust was launched in England. But so chilly was its reception from the people that its promoters were glad to wind it up. And the most popular man in England, the most dearly beloved in England is her King. Can this be said of the German Emperor? Can it be said of the King of Belgium? Why does the Sultan of Turkey require 15,000 troops to guard him every night while he tries to take a nap? Why does the Czar of Russia travel in an iron-clad train? Why had a recent President of ]France to take 6o detectives with him on every railway journey? Why did even the last German Kaiser sleep with a loaded revolver under his pillow? How is it that King Edward requires none of these precautions? It is because England is really a democracy freeing her people slowly but surely from social and financial servitude.

The wave of armed and frantic revolution which inundated Europe in 1848 hardly touched England. So also, England is the hope of the wage-earner. And this is so because the Motherland is trying to make men, as well as money. A fish is just as cold as the water it swims in. The anarchy of Europe is the natural product of false economic and social standards. Secondly, England holds her place by commercial enterprise. There is an English beetle which swims in the brooks. It has two pair of eyes, one for the air and the other for the water. England developed eyes for the water as well as eyes for the land. She has now 200,000 ships afloat under her flag. England saw that control of the tropics dictates the history of trade and commerce. She saw that when Amsterdam controlled the keys of the Eastern Spice regions, she was the most prosperous city in the world. So England formed the East India Company. This made London the Queen City of the World's commerce. So that with both her sea and land eyes open, England sees the vital importance of keeping the trade of the 400,000,000 of China open to the whole world. England saw the commercial importance of her language. And she has made English the trade language of the world. Since 1801, the English language increased 225 per cent. The next increase is that of Germany, 100 per cent. Seven years ago the Emperor of China decreed that the English language be taught in all Chinese schools. It has been said that England could only live eight weeks without bringing food from other lands, and that therefore, England depends on other races. Such people forget that if England depends on outside markets to sell to her, that those very markets are dependent on her buying. So that to close England to the outside markets would strike a death blow to the commerce of every Nation that has come to depend on her as a buyer. It still remains true that England's very existence depends on her remaining Mistress of the Seas. She must defend the 200,000 ships carrying her flag. If France lost her whole Navy she would still remain a first-class power. But England without her Navy would cease from the map in about six months. France, eight years ago, announced to the world that she would give up comparing her fleet to the fleet of England. So strong is our Navy that eleven years ago, Lord Randolph Churchill, amid ringing cheers in Parliament, said: "Let Germany clearly understand that her fleet will never be allowed to bombard New York while one British Warship floats on the Atlantic."

You can understand that an Englishman's faults are those belonging to a dominant race. He wants his shoes blacked. He wants his morning paper warmed before it is handed to him. He likes a thermometer for his coffee. He wants his beafsteak tender, and his wife submissive. He walks as if he owned creation and talks as if most men were his inferiors. He has the faults which belong to the ruler of 400,000,000 of the human race. Owning an Empire fifty-three times the size of France, fifty-two times the size of Germany, with three times the population of Russia, occupying one-fifth of the whole globe, embracing four continents, 10,000 islands, and 2,000 rivers, rulir; over all these peoples, the Englishman has developed some faults, some grave faults.

Thirdly, England is great by her humanity in war. In our Grand River there is a spring strongly impregnated with magnesium limestone. Birds' eggs, flowers, mosses, are turned into stone by its petrifying process. So war usually petrifies and hardens nations. But the smoke was hardly from England's guns at Khartoum, before the General of that army was on his way to England to solicit a cool half million to build a college in which to educate his country's defeated enemy. England is the only country in the world which has ever treated a defeated enemy that way. So that her armies have become the forerunners of colleges, education, and elevation of the conquered peoples. This is no new feature in England's history. Take her treatment of the Danes. The Danes were princely pirates. They had no territory but the tossing floor of the restless Ocean, no dwelling but ships, and they harassed England. They resembled the Turks in courage and wherever they set foot, progress was arrested. They destroyed churches. burned houses, slaughtered men, outraged women, and tossed children on pikes. When England conquered them what did she do? Educated, Christianized, civilized, fused them into the Saxon, making a stronger England.

Fourthly, she is great in her development towards Imperial Unity. When the tide is out by the sea shore, you can see all along the shore small pools of water. Even small fish find a difficulty to get a living in these little pools. But when the great tide comes rolling in, these little pools are united into one great body so that a great whale could swim where a minnow had before panted for life. So the Englishman, himself a composite, felt that a united Empire afforded scope for the life of a great people. The building of this Empire began with Elizabeth. Her predecessor had lost the last foot of land on the continent of Europe. Hence Englishmen saw the necessity of expansion elsewhere. But our size is now our danger. Every sucker on a tree enfeebles its fruit-bearing power. An Empire is like a tree. The gardener does not allow the sap to go everywhere. He prunes the offshoots, and thus directs the sap into a few fruit-bearing branches. So instead of further expansion England is trying to unify. The reign of our late Queen has been noted for the unifying of the peoples of this earth. Prussia, Bavaria, and 2o small states formed the German Empire; scattered Italy, united over 30 years ago; the squabbling Cantons of Switzerland unified since 'q.8. So the coming closer together into a closer unity of all her people is being silently worked 'by England.

Fifthly, she is great in the keeping up of her muscle, so that she may command, and at the same time allow liberty. England dare not take it easy. England dare not let her muscle down. A nation is a trustee to protect her citizens from foreign aggression and domestic wrong. The country which believes that it is delivered once and forever from conflict is on the verge of collapse. Greece, Rome, Egypt and China when they regarded pain and hardship as dreadful came to be feeble through luxurious ease. You remember that at the battle of Ping Yang between Japan and China, when the fight was at its height a heavy shower of rain descended on the two armies. Immediately, the easy-going Chinese put up their paper umbrellas to keep themselves dry. Doing so they became an easy target for the Japs, and lost the battle.

England is teaching a lesson in Empire never taught before, viz., how to combine power and liberty. Her problem has been how to allow the greatest degree of personal liberty consistent with public order and Imperial unity. The Roman Empire, one-fourth the size of the British, had no such problem to solve. With Rome the word Empire meant command, because Empire can only in the long run be maintained by strength. The Romans held to that truth. That truth is timeless and is true yet. England has resolved, as the Romans did, but with higher aims and a nobler spirit, to be supreme, whatever happens. The stronger England makes herself the more generous she may be to weaker nations. England is making an Empire where supreme command and reasonable liberty are combined. No Empire has ever achieved that.

As an example of the magnanimity of England take the one fact that at this moment when Home Rule is so distasteful to the majority of Englishmen, she allows Ireland 40 members more than she is entitled to, and jogs along herself with 40 members less than she is entitled to. Only a strong nation could be thus generous. The present claim of Home Rule for Ireland is over-represented by 39 seats. Ireland with the most liberal allowance can claim but 65 seats. Unionist constituencies in Ireland average 8,03o electors while Home Rule constituencies average 6,480 electors.

The present moment is critical because of Germany. One of the most serious reasons to fear war is because of the belief in both countries that war must come. An Anglo-German war is regarded as probable in almost every Chancellerie in Europe. Not six weeks ago Prof. Harms lectured on "England and Germany" before the German Navy League at Kiel. The German Grand Admiral was present. The third son of the German Emperor was present. In that lecture Prof. Harms discussed the probability of England going to war with Germany before the German naval plans were completed. His conclusion, in his own words, was: "England's position in India, and in Egypt, and the exposed situation of Canada, compel her to practise extreme caution in regard to the concentration of her forces on any one spot." Thus you see that the official class in Germany are weighing war chances.

Then our Colonials are also weighing war possibilities. Sir Wilfrid Laurier was asked what he meant by the term "Emergency." His answer was, "an emergency means war, anywhere in which Great Britain is engaged. If Britain is at war, Canada is at war, and is immediately liable to invasion." We all know that the colossal German navy is not built for a floating museum, for the fun of fireworks. To ignore the danger is only to lay a plaster on an open sore. The danger is all the greater because the German voter does not count. Only the men who administer the machine count. The German people do not direct German policy. Two months ago a book was written in Germany entitled, "Kranke England." This title means "Sick England." This book frankly teaches that England is practically doomed by her own degeneracy. The question with the German author is who will get control of England. He seems to regard Germany as being destined to administer the British Empire. Here are his own words: "The eternal law of the survival of the strongest governs us all. In obedience to this law the possibilities which the British Empire offers for the development of mankind will not be suffered to run to waste in hands too weak to use them. The strong man must and will come." He clearly believes that that strong man is Germany.

You will be pleased to know that though the Germans have a genius for facing facts. yet in this book they have not got all the facts. For instance, the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration could not discover any evidence that the men of England already suffered from a state of deterioration. The German author of that book has actually taken statements made by Opposition newspapers and Opposition members of Parliament in the heat of debate as actual fact. What a Godsmitten, blue-ruin region, any country can be made in the stump speeches of Oppositionists. But the most serious fact threatening England is the Navy law of Germany which requires her to have a fleet of such a strength that even for the mightiest naval power a war with her would involve such risks as to jeopardize its own supremacy. England's present duty is to work, not under the limelight of a pyrotechnical patriotism, but in the cool prosaic calm of profound peace. England must work out the command of the sea in two places: 1st. In the schools of the country; 2nd. In the dock-yards of the country and Colonies.

England must not depend on the good-will of any other nation. I was present in Germany during some weeks of the Boer war and I was in touch with University thought, and after that nightmare I say: "England must not depend on the good-will of any other nation." Nine days after that war broke out the German Emperor said: "Bitter is our need of a strong navy." You will be pleased to know that from that hour the men on British ships have become increasingly British. 1906--85 percent British. 1907-86 percent British. 1908--87 percent British. When the struggle comes it will find English ships manned by sons of Ireland, Scotland, and England. The nonsense written by a well-meaning United States citizen about England being at the end of her resources in financing navy-expenditure is now well known to be nonsense. The fact is we are spending less, in proportion to our wealth, on our navy, than at any time in our history. England could double her present naval expenditure without going into the bankruptcy court. Ten years of our present rate of increase will ruin Germany if she tries to keep up. Those ten years will make war impossible by keeping our fleet progressively superior. So that the greatest factor making for peace is the present development of our Navy.

The most hopeful sign is the Colonial support of the Motherland in subscribing additional ships, thus adding to the ship-building resources of the Empire. And let us remember that the man who feels that he must win or perish can always call up more energies in a fight than a mere aggressor for the sake of gain or prestige. Command of the sea is not a matter of life or death to Germany. It is to England. And because it is to England it is to Canada, exposed without the fleet as the Professor at Kiel pointed out last month. The dream of national ease or peace while such empires as Russia, Turkey, Austria, and Germany are armed to carry out military ideals, is visionary and even criminal. England's very life depends on her muscle. She is heartily hated, deeply, incurably hated by Germany. Therefore encourage Great Britain to keep her muscle in her Navy, in her Army, and in her games. Canada will do her part. Our sentiment toward the Mother-land is voiced by the poet

"O, Triune Kingdom of the brave,
O, sea-girt island of the free.
O. Empire of the land and wave.
Our hearts, our hands. are all for thee.
Stand Canadians, firmly stand,
Round the flag of Fatherland."