Sinclair Kennedy

“ Yet slowly a consciousness is creeping over us by way now of London, now of Brisbane, now of Durban, or again of Vancouver or San Francisco, that all is not as safe for us as it once was. Once we could afford to squabble a bit in the family; now we feel we must stop such silly behaviour. To all of us has come this feeling. It is not merely the appearance of Germany in the North Sea or the South Pacific, nor the desire of Asiatic Indian coolies for entrance to the Transvaal, nor the willingness of these and other Asiatics to share with us the wealth of North America. ”

“ What we have acquired a habit of doing on a large scale, we can do again on a larger scale. Such representatives can construct, for submission to our voters, a framework of federal Pan-Angle government.
With the voters of the seven Pan-Angle nations rest the decisions of when and how our co-operation is to be accomplished. That it is to be accomplished many now earnestly believe. And of it many can now say, as did Washington in the American Constitutional Convention: "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair." ”

“ The greater part of the work for federation, either Britannic or Pan-Angle, has already been done for us. The explorer, the trader, the missionary, and the soldier have won for us the eminence from which we are now able to survey the world and form our plans. The statesmen who in our many legislative halls have laboured to fit forms of government to the needs of the governed have tested for us the material for our building and have discarded what was ill-suited to our purposes. The millions of individuals who have held true to their Pan-Angle ideals have bequeathed them to us for inspiration. ”

“ Three choices lie before the Pan-Angles: the make-shift regime of Downing Street and the gambling uncertainties of arbitration boards, the jarring separation we have known in our past, the noble method of union which our race has evolved, tested, and in four separate nations adopted. By solving our international differences of opinion in a federal government we can husband our strength for self-defence as a united power against other civilizations.
Despite our self-esteem we are not the only civilization in the world. ”

“ Once we could believe that our rivals, personal, national, or racial, were bad because different; but nowadays we cannot call it wrong when others, less favourably situated than we in the sunshine of this world, strive like ourselves for comfort. "The tragedy of history is not the conflict between right and wrong, but the conflict between right and right." Each civilization knows it is right. Each is right {131} till another civilization is proved to be not only right, but better. ”

“ Each of these governments will be free to pursue any policy it likes, and each will have military or naval strength with which to back its policy. Each of them, therefore, may involve itself in war. And if the policy of one government, or the use it makes of its navy, does lead to war, what is to be the position? Are the other governments to be involved? The Dominions, not unreasonably, do not admit their responsibility for the policy of Great Britain, because they have no share in framing it. ”

“ Consequently, the American executive stands apart from the legislative power as the British executive stands near, and is part of, the legislative power. To the American executive and his cabinet, chosen not from Congress but from the country at large, is the explicit duty of administering, not of making, laws, except in so far as the veto power gives the president some share in checking legislation. But the instinct of the race still calls on the president, as though he were the spokesman of his nation, to assist the other representatives in making as well as executing the laws. ”

“ Organized and unorganized, they are seeking patiently and intelligently for the safety of their respective nations, which they know is bound up in the safety of the whole people. They know the political ideals of their race. They know that though the unrepresented may be spasmodically willing to waive their rights in times of great common danger, they none the less believe that "taxation without representation is tyranny." These men know also that money gifts by any Pan-Angle nation to a navy controlled by another Pan-Angle nation is contrary to the political instincts of all involved. ”

“ Each of these powers, of small account by itself, is already an important factor in the scale which measures the balance of power. And as they are steadily increasing in wealth and population, it is only a question of time before some of them will become first-class powers in their turn. What will be the position of the Empire then, if it has to depend upon the navy of England alone? Obviously the day must come when, if the Empire is to continue, it must be defended by the joint efforts of all its self-governing peoples. ”

“ Because the power to amend the written Constitution is not in Congress, it has come about that courts see to it that the will of the popular power so expressed shall not be ignored or vitiated by those who are the servants of that popular power. Because the power to amend the written portions of the British Constitution is in Parliament, there can be no clash between the wishes of Parliament and its Constitution. What Parliament does is the final test of what the Constitution is. ”

“ In no sphere is the individualism of the Pan-Angle more rampant than in matters of religion. Liberty of conscience to him is as necessary as liberty of body, and he has struggled to obtain it with the same persistency. ”

“ Commerce affords the quickest attack on a nation's standard of living. Those who abhor war often overlook the fact that trade reprisal may also produce similar inexpressible suffering. The frictions of commerce in the thirteen American nations in the eighteenth century, the similar discords in Australia before 1900, and in South Africa before 1910, point the same lesson—an adequate central government to adjust such differences. While lacking such an adequate central government for the seven Pan-Angle nations, our only recourse when interests conflict is to our mutual forbearance. ”

“ In our dealings with each other neither force nor intrigue should have place. Our history shows that if we adhere to these ideals we can succeed in co-operation.
We must avoid interfering with each other. Interference even when actuated by the best of motives leads, as Pan-Angles have repeatedly experienced, to disastrous frictions and ruptures. This knowledge we have repeatedly bought at great cost. So well has the lesson been learned, that even in cases where interference is constitutional and where circumstances seem to justify it, a Pan-Angle government first tries persuasion. ”

“ To the British Isles, South Africa, Newfoundland, Canada, and the United States, non-British peoples have come. Even New Zealand and Australia, almost purely British as they are, have their French and German settlements respectively. In the British Isles the reception and absorption of foreign stocks has been unspectacular. Individuals, or from time to time groups, seeking the larger tolerance of England, have taken up an abode there. One has but to observe and listen in the streets to be convinced that foreign invaders, though with no hostile intent, still land on British soil. ”

“ That something more desired by all Pan-Angles is local autonomy.
To representation in a central legislature must be added the local control of local questions so dear to Pan-Angle individualism. This is what federalism accomplishes. [200-1] "Our Federal system is the only form of popular government that would be possible in a country like ours, with an enormous territory and 100,000,000 population. . . . But for this safety valve by which people of one State can have such State government as they choose, we would never be able to keep the union of all the people so harmonious as we now have." ”

“ In this labour of education we must work openly in the presence of each other and under the scrutiny of the nations of the world. If we were Germans or Japanese, an international coup might be accomplished by diplomatic work unknown to the voters, and the affair put through with secrecy and despatch. It is vain to wish for such a style of procedure, and we have no desire, in this case, to change from the more laborious and tedious method of popular education and individual action. ”

“ Antagonism toward Germany might seem justified were it not that the fear of these other three powers, so different in civilization from us, makes Germany our natural and civilization ally. The victory of Germany over any portion of the Britannic world would be a Pan-Angle calamity. The fall of modern Germany would be hardly less of a Pan-Angle calamity. Any thought of the whites weakening each other, and especially of weakening their chance for developing their individualism, should be abhorrent to every Pan-Angle or German who can see further than the mass of his fellows. ”

“ What is desirable in this federation to preserve ourselves from the menace of other civilizations? How shall we balance our powers to ensure freedom to the individual and freedom to local groups to follow their individual yearnings with safety to them and to us all? ”

“ Here, obviously, are not officials who as executives and legislators are part of any common government. They are part of only one government, viz. that of the British Isles. Certain matters in government must proceed from a single source. In the United States the federal government, which represents all the people and each state, has this in its charge and has machinery by which to enforce its power. Among the Britannic nations, the government of one of them controls these matters with no other machinery than persuasion to enforce its often debated authority. ”

“ Whenever a specific issue arises in our relations with Latin-America, a practical test of what the public feeling in this country amounts to is offered. Our history for the past dozen years abounds in 'incidents' that revealed the public temper. It is certain that whenever such a test has been made in the Latin-American states around the Caribbean Sea, the fear of the jealousy of European encroachment manifests itself instantly and warns the administration of the day what the people expect the government to do. ”

“ Such have been the histories of the freedom of conscience, the abolition of slavery, and a host of similar triumphs. Men of like ideals associate themselves together, take a name that proclaims their tenets, and spend their time and energy and money to set forth the truth as they see it. Everyone is given a chance to learn, but no one is compelled to believe. No purpose can be so lofty, no course of action so advantageous, that it does not need expounding. The countless peace societies and the millions spent in that cause bear witness. ”

“ But he was delighted to assure them that the Anglo-Saxon, or British, race, who settled the United States first, shaped its destinies, directed its energies, according to their conscience, against their own Motherland, and developed themselves and the great territory which they subdued, to this day, no matter how many men came from how many lands, still ruled it and led it. ”

“ Portugal and Holland both had ports at Cape Town before the British flag flew there. And as to dependencies or trade lands, India, Mauritius, Malacca, Ceylon, the Philippines, were all wrested from other nations, while hosts of islands in every sea fell undisputedly to us, only because no other powers felt strong enough to contest the point. If at any time we had been unable to take these, we should have been unable to grow and increase our standard of living to its present degree of comfort. There is among us to-day a great abhorrence of war. ”

“ Our successes have brought us the material benefits we see in the well-fed prosperity of our peoples. The non-material benefits it is difficult to estimate. So naturally do we accept both, that the thoughtless among us assume such comfort to be the normal lot of good people such as we are. We are content with our present portion—the best the world provides—and would counsel others to be content with theirs. We think we are a peaceful people, and deprecate as bad form the huge expenditures made by European nations for military and naval preparations. ”

“ War between any of the Britannic nations and America would be as fratricidal as that between any of the six Britannic nations. But the possibility of such a war, however abhorrent, is not to be ignored. America's population among the Pan-Angle nations soon will be approximated only by that of Canada. Rivalry between America and Canada would weaken the civilization in its population and wealth centre—its heart. If such rivalry should involve the clash of the six Britannic nations against America, the struggle {231} would be more stupendous than any the race has yet experienced. ”