Will the Empire Live? - Page 2

States, looking eastward to Japan and China, westward to all
Europe. See the great slashes of lake, bay, and mountain chain that cut
it meridianally. Obviously its main routes and trades and relations lie
naturally north and south; obviously its full development can only be
attained with those ways free, open, and active. Conceivably, you may
build a fiscal wall across the continent; conceivably, you may shut off
the east and half the west by impossible tariffs, and narrow its trade
to one artificial duct to England, but only at the price of a hampered
development It will be like nourishing the growing body of a man with
the heart and arteries of a mouse.

Then here, again, are New Zealand and Australia, facing South America
and the teeming countries of Eastern Asia; surely it is in relation to
these vast proximities that their economic future lies. Is it possible
to believe that shipping mutton to London is anything but the mere
beginning of their commercial development Look at India, again, and
South Africa. Is it not manifest that from the economic and business
points of view each of these is an entirely separate entity, a system
apart, under distinct necessities, needing entire freedom to make its
own bargains and control its trade in its own way in order to achieve
its fullest material possibilities?

Nor can I believe that financial entanglements greatly strengthen the
bonds of an empire in any case. We lost the American colonies because we
interfered with their fiscal arrangements, and it was Napoleon's attempt
to strangle the Continental trade with Great Britain that began his
downfall.

I do not find in the ordinary relations of life that business relations
necessarily sustain intercourse. The relations of buyer and seller are
ticklish relations, very liable to strains and conflicts. I do not find
people grow fond of their butchers and plumbers, and I doubt whether if
one were obliged by some special taxation to deal only with one butcher
or one plumber, it would greatly endear the relationship. Forced buying
is irritated buying, and it is the forbidden shop that contains the
coveted goods. Nor do I find, to take another instance, among the hotel
staffs of Switzerland and the Riviera--who live almost entirely upon
British gold--those impassioned British imperialist views the economic
link theory would lead me to expect.

And another link, too, upon which much stress is laid but about which I
have very grave doubts, is the possibility of a unified organisation of
the Empire for military defence. We are to have, it is suggested, an
imperial Army and an imperial Navy, and so far, no doubt, as the
guaranteeing of a general peace goes, we may develop a sense of
participation in that