24 May: Boreham on the British Empire

A Kaleidoscope Empire
Today is Empire Day. This year, as it befits the accession of a young Queen, the accent is on youth, tomorrow is to be observed throughout the world as Empire Youth Sunday.[1] It is natural that the character of the commemoration should vary from year to year; the Empire itself changes, its flexibility is its distinctive charm.

There is nothing mechanical, nothing stereotyped, nothing static about the bonds that hold its integral parts together. Every great historic convulsion brings about some modification. Yet the Empire remains an empire. The very word spreads before the mind a broad canvas of vivid and variegated dues.

There are words that mean very much more than any dictionary would suggest. They are instinct with fossil poetry, petrified history, embalmed romance. Among these archives of articulation few words are richer in encrusted tradition and glittering association than the word that falls so musically and so majestically upon our ears on the 24th of May.

The Basis On Which An Empire Can Be Built
Among empires, the British Empire has one outstanding claim to distinction. It is the first empire that has succeeded in evoking the deep-seated affection of its heterogeneous citizens. Rome, for example, was first a city, then a State, and at last an empire. As a city, she was the idol of every Roman. The proud people spelt the name Roma backwards, writing it Amor—I am loved! As a State, she still excited a certain, tepid enthusiasm in the breasts of the people. But, as an empire, nobody loved her well enough to be willing to defend her, and she consequently collapsed under her own weight.

Very few nations have survived the crucial test of the imperial. Devotion has evaporated as expansion has progressed. Other nations, when they became empires, regarded their dominions as territories to be pitilessly exploited for the enrichment and aggrandisement of the parent State. Great Britain set to work on a diametrically opposite principle. She has given of her best to her dependencies, and, has in the process bound them to herself with hoops of steel.

In an address to the students of Glasgow University, Lord Baldwin forcefully and eloquently elaborated this very matter. What, he asked, is the foundation of the Empire? On what has it rested in the golden days behind us? On what must it depend in the still more wonderful days to come? Lord Baldwin answered these questions in a single word. "Beyond the shadow of a doubt," he said, "the foundation of the British Empire is character."

Quoting from the poets and philosophers of antiquity, Lord Baldwin showed that, though the thinkers and seers of those distant days perceived the paramount necessity for some such foundation, the statesmen and rulers were unable to transmit the beautiful dream into concrete reality. Empires arose, but, in the absence of any spiritual dynamic by which character could be formed and presented, they fell into disintegration and decay. It was because Roman character wilted that the Roman Empire perished. Civilisation, lacking any stable basis in personal integrity, went to pieces and the world relapsed into barbarism.

The Stirring Challenge To An Empire's Youth
Empire Day and Empire Youth Sunday afford occasions, therefore, for reflecting on the stupendous obligations in which our imperial heritage involves us. The might of the Empire is the bulwark of democracy. But it is more: It is the hope of the world. Its maintenance, and the fulfilment of its mission, demand the consecrated intelligence of the finest type of citizenship. Unless the Empire can stand as the bastion of peace in a reconstructed world, the outlook for the coming years is dismally bleak.

In his "Argument of Empire," Prof. W. K. Hancock moves through chapter after chapter to the resistless conclusion that the guardianship of the world's peace must inevitably become the supreme responsibility of the British people. History, Professor Hancock demonstrates, has entrusted us with maritime power, commercial aptitude, and an uncanny genius for the government of peoples. Having acquired, through the discipline of the ages, these three priceless talents, we must dedicate them to the lofty enterprise of winning the confidence of the nations and of exercising such statecraft, such strength, and such moral authority as shall make future holocausts impossible.

On Empire Day we do well to reflect on our rare good fortune in inheriting the traditions of Alfred, of the spacious days of Great Elizabeth, and of the record reign of Queen Victoria whose birthday this is. But if those stately traditions are to be bequeathed undimmed and untarnished to unborn generations, the Britons of our own time must apply themselves with faith and with diligence to the constructive and pacific mission that today gleams like a challenging vision before us. To youth, particularly, the call of the hour rings like a bugle-blast.

[1] This editorial appears in the Hobart Mercury on May 24, 1952.

F W Boreham

Image: Young People