CAN BRITAIN KEEP IT UP?

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3148, 18 February 1911, Page 9

CAN BRITAIN KEEP IT UP?

AMERICAN’S AWE AT THE BURDEN OF EMPIRE.

HUNGRY RIVALS. There is an article in the January “Scribner’s Magazine” which complacent Britishers who believe in the eternal doctrine of “Everything’s all right” would do well to study. It is entitled “On the Way to India,” and is written by Mr. Price Collier, whose sketches on “England and tlie English from the American Point of View” contained some remarkable home truths.

/ This time Mr. Collier’s shafts _ are directed not at the Englishman at home, but tlie Englishman abroad. “As an admirer of John Bull,” he says, “I wish to call attention to the good health and good spirits, to the cheery, damn-the-consequcnces optimism which this situation illustrates.”

“The situation” means a good deal. It means, for one thin" an overwhelming burden of taxes. “Here is a customer,” says Mr. Collier, who persists in fooling himself with, the belief that he is a free-trader, while his net_ receipts from the customs are 1,402,500.000 dollars (£280.500,000) a year, _and his net receipts from excise are 1,514,000,000 dollars (£302,800,000). “In the United States we have not even scratched the surface of our taxable possibilities, while in Great Britain it looks as if Mrs. Bull’s shawl will have to go next, and they have dreary weather for ccatless and shawlless women in Great Britain.” And vet Mr. Collier finds the little, overcrowded island of Britain, with the ret of unemployment and destitution at the cere, ruling vast Empire and spending yearly sums that take even the American’s breath away. He cannot but admire : but he asks — with her increasing burdens at home and the fight for existence getting keener abroad—can Britain keep it up? PLAYING A GAME. Especially does this emery relate to India, where Mr. Collier has been and studied. After ho has written of the pressure of Germany’s growing needs, of the ever-growing burden of taxes, ho continues : “if an American returns from nearly a year’s ycurnev through the Far East, where Germany, Russia, -Japan, China, India, Egypt, and America are all keenly interested in this condition of the British Empire, and finds the Imperial Parliament apparently oblivious _of these matters, but engrossed in playing a game on the steps of the throne, with a "handful of Irishmen who represent tour million reonle only, he may be pardoned for thinking it liis business to tell liis countryman what he can of the situation “If yoiir neighbor’s house is on fire it would be silly indeed not to studv the way the chimneys were built, discover, if possible, liow : the fire started, and who was careless or who mischievous. “If the British Empire is not on fire, no one will deny that there is much smoke and smouldering both at home and in India, in Egypt, in South Arrica, and elsewhere. “Oh. we have heard this cry of f Wolf!’ so often reply a certain class of Englishman. Yes: 'they heard it in Spain, in Holla lid, the- heard it in France shortly before IS<O, and heeded it not. “That fable of the cry of ‘Wolf!’ has clone much harm, because it is misinterpreted. * “He who cries ‘Wolf!’ continually may be silly, but what of him who does not listen, when the real wolf appears? Better listen every time the cry is heard than lese all one’s sheep. “There are several hungry wolves about now, and one can almost see the hungry grin when they hear these martial heroes Stead and Carnegie, and William Jennings Byran, telling the sheep: ‘Oh, it is only the old cry of Wolf!’ “Sir Frederick Maurice writes that of one hundred and seventeen wars fought by European nations, or the United States, against civilised Powers, from 1700 to IS7O, there are only ten where hostilities were preceded by a declaration or war!” ARMING AND WAITING. And yet Mr. Collier finds that the British rulers are still as calm as. if there were no hungry nations arming and waiting. “The first thing one notices on going aslicre at Port Said is an illustration of the mekliods of that British race whose most notable and admirable characteristic is tlieir ability in the governing of alien peoples. “An English policeman, in the uniform of the Khedive, protects me from, the yelping boatmen with the came imperturabie good humor with which. I am so familiar in Piccadilly or the Strand. “His countenance changes slightly under different circumstances. M hen he marches alongside ten thousand suffragists on their wav to the Albert Hall he wears the amused exoression as of one who feels that lie impersonates there and then an unanswerable reply to all their shrillness, both plivsical and vocal. W! ien lie eonvevs thousands from the East End to Hyde Park lie is more serious, luvt here again lie looks, in his steady, patient manhood, an answer, even to them. “On the boat-landing at Port Saul lie seems mere bored, as of a man tired of brushing aside flies, but liis behavior is ever the same.” And here, at the Gate of India, Mr Collier leaves us for a time. Those who remember liis “England and the English” will wait expectantly for his further impression of the Briton abroad.