Imperial edict

“ The British Empire which still stands and even shows signs of permanence, has learned the lesson of union, and bids fair to become an empire in its name alone. British imperialism was once, as Professor Cramb has told us, the will to give all men under British sway an English mind, in the spirit of the boast of Alexander the Great: “I will make all men Hellenes.” But the instruction of England in the larger art of government, begun in North America, has been continued since, and her imperial aim is fast becoming a will to live with other men and let them live. ”

“ The imperial power must contend against all the ancient prejudices of our old Europe: it must centralise, as far as possible, all the powers of the State in the hands of one person, in order to destroy the abuses which the feudal and communal franchises have served to perpetuate. ”

“ The spectacle of German Imperialism, boastful, selfish, narrow, and altogether hateful, in its terrible blood-dance through Europe, has been an object-lesson to humanity against excesses of national vanity and national egotism and against Imperial pride. ”

“ The creation of infant Emperors, allowed to bear the Imperial name in their infancy and youth, but compelled to abdicate on reaching manhood, was a common device for maintaining nominal Imperialism with actual impotence. ”

“ An Imperial policy must, of course, be carried out with reasonable prudence, and the principles of government which guide our relations with whatsoever races are brought under our control must be politically and economically sound and morally defensible. This is, in fact, the keystone of the Imperial arch. The main justification of Imperialism is to be found in the use which is made of the Imperial power. If we make a good use of our power, we may face the future without fear that we shall be overtaken by the Nemesis which attended Roman misrule. ”

“ They have been so few, and the development of their own Colony has taxed their energies so fully, that they have had no time as yet to dream of Empire.
Yet—and here comes the seeming paradox—they are Imperialists; not Imperialists in the sense of men whose vision is to dominate inferior races, rule subject territory, and maintain powerful fleets and armies with which to assert mastery, nor is any very large share of their time and attention devoted to Imperial politics. ”

“ There are two sides to all great questions. But whether or not we can settle with the light of modern knowledge such a point as this, I look upon the defence of imperialism in itself, in preference to constitutional government with all its imperfections, as an outrage on the whole progress of modern civilization, and on whatever remains of dignity and intelligence among the people. ”

“ The Ten Commandments are in one sense 'imperial.' Now, I think the word as used in the phrase British Empire has, in the most modern and best sense, quite a different savour or flavour from that of Napoleon's Empire, or the Turkish or Mahommedan Empires of the past. It has come to mean the 'Dominion of Freedom' or the 'Reign of Liberty,' rather than the giving of despotic or tyrannical or oligarchic commands. In fact, our Imperialism is freedom for all races and peoples who choose to accept it, whilst Boer Republicanism is the exact opposite. How strangely words change their weight and value! ”

“ Yet I can not but admit, however reluctantly, that there is some force in the arguments with which you support that course, based as they are upon your special and personal relation to that portion of the controversy which deals with Colonial preference. You have done more than any man, living or dead, to bring home to the citizens of the Empire the consciousness of Imperial obligation, and the interdependence between the various fragments into which the Empire is geographically divided. ”

“ If war then be a permanent factor in the life of States, how, it may be asked, will it be affected by Imperialism and by such an ideal as this of Imperial Britain? The effects upon war, will, I should say, be somewhat of this nature. It will greaten and exalt the character of war. Not only in constitutional, but in foreign politics, the roots of the present lie deep in the past. In the wars of an imperial State the ideals of all the wars of the past still live, adding a fuller life to the life of the present. ”

“ To bring the practice of the empire into complete harmony with the theory it would be necessary to constitute, for the purpose of advising the crown on imperial affairs, a council in which all important parts of the empire should be represented.
The gradual recognition of the constitutional theory of the British empire, and the assumption by the principal Imperialism. colonies of full self-governing responsibilities, has cleared the way for a movement in favour of a further development which should bring the supreme headship of the empire more into accord with modern ideas. ”

“ The English may want the Colonies, but the Colonies do not want the English—at any rate, on bonds of unity lines. The banner of Imperialism which has waved so gloriously during the past lustrum will have to be furled and put away. The great Imperial idea declines to work; it has been brought on the political stage half a century too late. At best it was a fetch, and it has failed. The All-Beloved will have to find some other way out. ”

“ In speech after speech he proclaimed the world-mission of Germany, of which he himself was the divinely appointed instrument; Germans are “the salt of the earth [1] ;” they must not “weary in the work of civilization,” and Germanism, like the spirit of imperial Rome, must expand and impose itself. [2] This new imperialism, too, had a religious basis, for “the whole of human life hinges simply and solely on our attitude towards our Lord and Saviour.” [3] The emperor's progresses in the East were conceived in the spirit of the new crusade, at once Christian and German ”

“ The Empire was much more than the military guard of the Asiatic frontier; it not only defended but also kept alive the traditions of Greek and Roman culture. We cannot over-estimate the importance of the presence of a highly civilised state for a system of nations which were as yet only beginning to be civilised. The constant intercourse of the Empire with Italy, which until the eleventh century was partly imperial, and with southern Gaul and Spain, had an incalculable influence on the development of the West. ”

“ They all contribute handsomely to the cost of Imperial defence, and, though they are all exceedingly prosperous, an immense proportion of their populations are Asiatics—as peaceful, loyal, and law-abiding subjects of the Crown as are to be found in other parts of the Empire. ”

“ Now, the Imperialism of the hour is in one sense only the expression of this shifting of interest from the internal problems of Europe to the outward expansion of her influence; and if we are to believe its enemies, who will admit the possibility of no Imperialism but the Imperialism of conquest, it is that in its worst form, and nothing more. ”

“ Poetry and heroism have in the past clothed it with undying fame; but recent history, by instance and by argument from Europe and from other continents, has proved that a young nation may be old in corruption, and a small State great in oppression, that right is not always on the side of weakness, nor injustice with the strong.
Not for the first time in history are these two principles, Nationality and Imperialism, or principles strikingly analogous, arrayed against each other. Modern Europe, as we have seen, is a complexus of States, of which the Nation is the constituent unit. ”

“ The insufficiency of British Imperialism is not that it is imperial, let alone military. The insufficiency of British Imperialism is that it is British; when it is not merely Jewish. It is that just as a man is no more than a man, so a nation is no more than a nation; and any nation is inadequate as an international model. ”

“ This Empire, then, is obviously a middle term between the two other great Empire States that are its contemporaries, holding the balance between them, free alike from the exaggerated nationalism of the one and the exaggerated Imperialism of the other. It contains nations in the making, but it is not a nation in the making as a whole, for the welding of the manifold races within its bounds into a homogeneous nationality is as little probable in any time that we need consider as the assimilation of all the races of the world to one uniform type. ”

“ The progress of the people in science and art, in politics and military strength, was only seen in the larger secular territories, which, after 1648, enjoyed their own sovereignty; and even these were checked in their movements at every step by the remnants of the Imperial Constitution. The Members of the Empire alone, in whom the decaying remains of Mediæval existence still lingered on--the Ecclesiastical Princes--the small Counts--the Imperial Knights and the Imperial Towns,--clung to the Emperor and the Imperial Diet. ”

“ Of the pre-war Pangerman literature only one or two more books need be mentioned. In "Deutscher Imperialismus" (2nd edition, 1914) Herr Arthur Dix gives a short and able exposition of the imperialist tendency of Pangermanism. The author had led up to this work by a series of careful and detailed studies of social and economic questions. [1] In his book he first of all examines the imperial record of England, Japan, U.S.A., Russia and France, and then goes on to state the case for Germany's imperial expansion. Germany must become a world power. ”

“ Since the non-European world in the eyes of Europeans did not live up to the European standard of ‘civilisation’ they did not exert sovereign authority over their lands. For that reason, in the eyes of Europeans, and European jurists, [43] the world beyond Europe could be legally and legitimately subjected to the imperial control of the sovereign European states by a variety of different means ranging from conquest to cession. ”

“ At his side is the imperial chancery, a body of officials who, in turn, have to do in each department with the affairs of the whole empire. The imperial court, too, in spite of all its limitations, is none the less a court for the whole empire. Not less clearly is the territorial unity expressed in the unity of legislation. In the circumstances in which we left the old empire there could scarcely be any question any longer of real imperial legislation. ”

“ It is to be observed in reference to this interesting aspect of imperial development, that the multiplication and cheapening of channels of communication and means of travel throughout the empire will tend to modify the future accentuation of race difference, while the variety of elements in the vast area occupied should have an important, though as yet not scientifically traced, effect upon the British imperial type. ”

“ There is no section of the history of European imperialism more interesting than the story of the growth and organisation of the heterogeneous and disparate empire with which Britain entered upon the new age. ”

“ The fear of the Spanish and Flemish parentage of the new Emperor is seen in their demands that German or Latin should be the official language, that imperial offices should be reserved for Germans, that the States should not be subject to any foreign jurisdiction, and that no foreign troops should serve in imperial wars without the consent of the Diet. The opposition to papal claims prompted the Princes to insist on the abolition of every innovation introduced by the court of Rome, in contravention of the concordat made with Germany after the Council of Constance (1418) . ”

“ But political unity and economic development are not in themselves sufficient to meet the needs of Imperial Defence. They form the national basis. But they will not by themselves insure that that material basis is efficiently utilized. ”

“ Thus the Imperial letters make an historical document of the highest value, providing the key to the complex and hidden machinery of European international policies during the ten years preceding the Great War, which was their inevitable and disastrous consummation. In as far as the GERMAN EMPEROR himself is concerned, there is little scope for conjecture, inasmuch as he condemns himself with his own hand. History as a general rule is largely a matter of piecing together available evidence and filling in the gaps with ingenious and learned hypotheses. ”

“ It is to be noted that as soon as the ordinary Imperialist gets anywhere near the solution of an imperial question he gets unconsciously on to the Socialist track, as for instance in the growing demand for the imperialisation of our great carrying lines. ”

“ It is for His Imperial Majesty to consider, after a declaration in the nature of a defiance from the Ruler of France, a declaration highly insulting to His Imperial Majesty when his intervention for peace had been previously accepted, whether the moment is not arrived for all the Great Powers of Europe to act in concert for their common interests and honour. To obtain for their States what may deserve the name of peace they must look again to establish an Equilibrium in Europe. ”

“ Unquestionably confusion of thought is caused by the careless use of the term Empire into which English people have fallen. Applied to India and the crown colonies it is admissible, though with the qualification that in practice the Empress of India acts as much under advice as the Queen of England. As a name for the 'slowly grown and crowned Republic' of which the mother-land is the type and the great self-governing colonies copies, the term Empire is a misnomer, and has none of the meaning which it has when applied to Russia, Austria, or the France of the Napoleons. ”

“ Yet there is always an element of unrest and insecurity underlying the position of imperial rulership over different and often discordant groups of subjects; and this has been one main cause of the immemorial weakness of Asiatic empires, and of the indifference of the people to a change of masters, because no single dynasty represented the whole people. It is just this weakness of the native rulers that has enabled the European to make his conquests in Asia ”