John Colomb

“ The circumstance of the South African War and the failure of the War Office theories of British defence touched the hearts of all men under the British flag, and aroused from its long sleep the sense of responsibility and duty to the Empire. ”

“ The infant Britains beyond sea formed a different idea of their own fixture, being confident in the knowledge of their unlimited natural resources, which were freely conferred upon them by the Home Country, and of their ability to develop vast wealth and commercial greatness to rival in the ftiture the position of the United Kingdom itself. In the calm sunshine of universal peace, the huge foreign lions, with their teeth and natural appetites, were to lie down with these colonial lambs, and wag tails of approval at their rapid and successful development of power. ”

“ At home all idea of building up and consolidating, however slowly, a British Empire, embracing all its infinite and varied resources for common security in war and mutual advantage in peace, was openly spurned and deliberately repudiated. British communities abroad consequently became persuaded that the old Imperial spirit of Britain was dead, and they were driven from conception of Imperial duties and obligations towards an exclusive provincial patriotism, offering the immediate prospect of becoming a series of separate and glorified municipalities. ”

“ If they prove insuperable, let it at all events be through no fault of ours; let it be because the inherent difficulties in the problem are such that no human wisdom, no patriotism, however unselfish, is able to surmount them, But I, for my own part, am unwilling—indeed, unable—to contemplate so fatal, so serious an outcome. ”

“ That is a perfectly true statement, because a Canadian citizen of Empire pays nothing towards the upkeep of Empire, such as the diplomatic, consular, and naval or military services, while sharing equally with those at home, who bear the whole cost, all the security and advantages these services confer. There is no other empire or nation in the world where the resources of only a part bear the entire cost and responsibility of providing what is necessary to secure against attack the existence of the realm as a whole, or the retention of any one of its several component portions. ”

“ It is no matter of surprise that, in days when a purely commercial instinct dominated policy, the importance of these possessions was measured by the immediate cash value of their custom. No oversea possession was then a going concern wholly independent of aid from the Mother Country in its local requirements, so the ledger account between the two was, in the view of the more powerful politicians at home, all on the wrong side. Possessions beyond sea were therefore looked upon as a liability of the United Kingdom, not as a potential asset of an Empire. ”

“ The Mother Country now begins to see her past errors in principles of defensive policy, and has set up the framework of consultative machinery to endeavour to avoid a repetition of her own extravagantly costly blunders in preparations for war. The difficulties in her way of extricating from a network of military confusions, prejudices, and vested interests, a rational and businesslike military system adequate to fulfil the obligations of war are immeasurably great. ”

“ The Colonies are cities of refuge for those who desire to belong to a great Empire free of the cost necessary to provide, not only for its security, but for the protection of their trade and commerce on any and every sea in which they choose to do business. At Charing Cross the Canadian Government have an office, and the passers-by can read in the windows that a great attraction offered to induce people to transfer themselves from the United Kingdom to the Dominion is "Light Taxation." ”

“ The greatest traders in the world have the greatest interest in the preservation of maritime peace.
The total aggregate annual value of the maritime trade of British States and territories, even now, amounts to some fifteen hundred millions sterling, only two-thirds of which represent that of the Mother-land. The aggregate annual public expenditure, under all heads, of the outlying Empire now exceeds that of the United Kingdom, the aggregate annual revenues of Greater Britain being greater than that of the Mother Country. ”

“ While every continent has been a theatre of carnage since the great Peace Exhibition of 1851, it is the American which furnishes the most conspicuous proof that common faith, language, and history provide no certain guarantee of peace, even between two sections of the same people, when excited by antagonistic claims of self-interest. ”

“ The most discouraging feature in the prospect of transmarine possessions cooperating with the Mother Country for the maintenance of the navy is the effect of the policy and example pursued for over forty years by the Mother Country herself. The reflex action of what is above described as the 'negation of Imperial patriotism' has strongly impressed the colonial mind. It was the Mother Country, not the Colonies, which dethroned the ideal of an Empire bonded together for mutual advantages and for the discharge of common obligations. ”

“ The essential condition of the existence of the whole fabric of Empire, the pride and boast of all its citizens, is predominant sea-power, but the burden of maintaining it is left to those who live in the Mother-land to bear. To give a plain illustration of the effects of this existing arrangement—any man who lives at home and pays taxes bears his share of the cost of the fleet ”

“ The burden of cost to provide an adequate army for the general service of the Empire, added to the ever increasing weight of expenditure necessary to maintain predominant sea-power in the world, suggests the question. How long can the resources of these islands discharge the general naval and military obligations of a world-spread State? The warnings of successive Chancellors of the home Exchequer are sufficiently ominous to make it impossible to believe the present rate of expenditure can much longer continue. ”

“ It is not what we are to get each for himself; it is not what we are to give to this or to that self-governing element within our borders; it is what every self-governing fragment of this great whole can itself contribute for a common object; and the common object of defence certainly stands in the very first rank. ”

“ It may be that the prominence of aversion to war as an international sentiment is due, not to any higher standard of national ethics, but to the proportions to which operations of war have grown, and their cost increased, by science applied to methods of destruction. ”

“ These temporary and purely military measures were contrary to the teachings of insular experience of wars, which in effect were that when fighting had to be done, success lay not in accumulation of means of sedentary defence at home, but in active and combined offensive operations abroad. The fact that our fathers immediately increased the fleet—at the very moment when a decisive victory had left maritime rivals impotent for harm—had its corollary in the cessation of efforts, and expenditure on passive and purely military defence at home. ”

“ Bitter is the remembrance of those days when England was rudely awakened from the vision of perpetual peace to contemplate the starving, tattered remnant of an army of heroes, sacrificed by her folly and neglect Hardly had that war closed when the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny occurred. ”

“ In this artificial atmosphere of commercial imagination that the old men of the present generation were brought up and the middle-aged were born; and it was but a natural result that many people in the United Kingdom should have come to regard friendly disintegration as the easiest way of escape from inconvenient responsibilities which did not pay. ”

“ Naturally, an island rich in coal and iron, at no point far from the sea, and having a population largely in excess of agricultural requirements, took the lead. Thus, near the close of the period of forty years of peace, pre-eminence in trade and manufactures came to be regarded as certain to continue, and, relying on its permanency, a new policy was demanded and inaugurated by the people of the United Kingdom. ”

“ It found embodiment in immense and immobile fortifications, costing millions, and a host of armed citizens constituting a cheap force which could hurt nobody's feelings, for its functions were limited to sitting down behind hedgerows waiting for the attack of a great hostile army crossing the sea, and landing for the deliberate purpose of destroying us! ”