At the death of Queen Victoria the development of the British Commonwealth entered upon a new phase. The epoch which followed has no precedent in our own previous experience as a nation, nor can we discover in the records of other empires anything which offers more than a superficial and misleading resemblance to it. The issues of this period presented themselves to different minds in a variety of different lights; but to all it was clear that we had reached one of the great turning-points in our history.
The passengers on a great ocean liner are apt to imagine, because their stomachs are now so little troubled by the perturbation of the waves, that it no longer profits them to offer up the familiar prayer 'for those in peril on the sea.' It is difficult for them to believe in danger where everything appears so steady and well-ordered, and where they can enjoy most of the distractions of urban life, from a cinematograph theatre to a skittle-alley, merely by descending a gilded staircase or crossing a brightly panelled corridor. But this agreeable sense of safety is perhaps due in a greater degree to fancy, than to the changes which have taken place in the essential facts. As dangers have been diminished in one direction {208} risks have been incurred in another. A blunder to-day is more irreparable than formerly, and the havoc which ensues upon a blunder is vastly more appalling. An error of observation or of judgment—the wrong lever pulled or the wrong button pressed—an order which miscarries or is overlooked—and twenty thousand tons travelling at twenty knots an hour goes to the bottom, with its freight of humanity, merchandise, and treasure, more easily, and with greater speed and certainty, than in the days of the old galleons—than in the days when Drake, in the Golden Hind of a hundred tons burden, beat up against head winds in the Straits of Magellan, and ran before the following gale off the Cape of Storms.
Comfort, whether in ships of travel or of state, is not the same thing as security. It never has been, and it never will be.
The position after Queen Victoria's death also differed from all previous times in another way. After more than three centuries of turmoil and expansion, the British race had entered into possession of an estate so vast, so rich in all natural resources, that a sane mind could not hope for, or even dream of, any further aggrandisement. Whatever may be the diseases from which the British race suffered during the short epoch between January 1901 and July 1914, megalomania was certainly not one of them.
The period of acquisition being now acknowledged at an end, popular imagination became much occupied with other things. It assumed, too lightly and readily perhaps, that nothing was likely to interfere with our continuing to hold what we had got. If there was not precisely a law of nature, which precluded the possessions of the British Empire from ever being {209} taken away, at any rate there was the law of nations. The public opinion of the world would surely revolt against so heinous a form of sacrilege. Having assumed so much, placidly and contentedly, and without even a tremor either as to the good-will or the potency of the famous Concert of Europe, the larger part of public opinion tended to become more and more engrossed in other problems. It began to concern itself earnestly with the improvement of the condition of the people, and with the reform and consolidation of institutions. Incidentally, and as a part of each of these endeavours, the development of an estate which had come, mainly by inheritance, into the trusteeship of the British people, began seriously to occupy their thoughts.
SOCIAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM
These were problems of great worth and dignity, but nevertheless there was one condition of their successful solution, which ought to have been kept in mind, but which possibly was somewhat overlooked. If we allowed ourselves to be so much absorbed by these two problems that we gave insufficient heed to our defences, it was as certain as any human forecast could be, that the solution of a great deal, which was perplexing us in the management of our internal affairs, would be summarily taken out of the hands of Britain and her Dominions and solved according to the ideas of strangers.
If we were to bring our policy of social and constitutional improvement and the development of our estate to a successful issue, we must be safe from interruption from outside. We must secure ourselves against foreign aggression; for we needed time. Our various problems could not be solved in a day or even in a generation. The most urgent {210} of all matters was security, for it was the prime condition of all the rest.
We desired, not merely to hold what we had got, but to enjoy it, and make it fructify and prosper, in our own way, and under our own institutions. For this we needed peace within our own sphere; and therefore it was necessary that we should be strong enough to enforce peace.
During the post-Victorian period—this short epoch of transition—there were therefore three separate sets of problems which between them absorbed the energies of public men and occupied the thoughts of all private persons, at home and in the Dominions, to whom the present and future well-being of their country was a matter of concern.
The first of these problems was Defence: How might the British Commonwealth, which held so vast a portion of the habitable globe, and which was responsible for the government of a full quarter of all the people who dwelt thereon—how might it best secure itself against the dangers which threatened it from without?
The second was the problem of the Constitution: How could we best develop, to what extent must we remake or remould, our ancient institutions, so as to fit them for those duties and responsibilities which new conditions required that they should be able to perform? Under this head we were faced with projects, not merely of local self-government, of 'Home Rule,' and of 'Federalism'; not merely with the working of the Parliament Act, with the composition, functions, and powers of the Second Chamber, with the Referendum, the Franchise, and {211} such like; but also with that vast and even more perplexing question—what were to be the future relations between the Mother Country and the self-governing Dominions on the one hand, and between these five democratic nations and the Indian Empire and the Dependencies upon the other?
For the third set of problems no concise title has yet been found. Social Reform does not cover it, though perhaps it comes nearer doing so than any other. The matters involved here were so multifarious and, apparently at least, so detached one from another—they presented themselves to different minds at so many different angles and under such different aspects—that no single word or phrase was altogether satisfactory. But briefly, what all men were engaged in searching after—the Labour party, no more and no less than the Radicals and the Tories—was how we could raise the character and material conditions of our people; how by better organisation we could root out needless misery of mind and body; how we could improve the health and the intelligence, stimulate the sense of duty and fellowship, the efficiency and the patriotism of the whole community.
Of these three sets of problems with which the British race has recently been occupying itself, this, the third, is intrinsically by far the most important.
IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL REFORM
It is the most important because it is an end in itself whereas the other two are only the means for achieving this end. Security against foreign attack is a desirable and worthy object only in order to enable us to approach this goal. A strong and flexible constitution is an advantage only because we believe it will enable us to achieve our objects, better and more quickly, than if we are compelled to go on working {212} under a system which has become at once rigid and rickety. But while we were bound to realise the superior nature of the third set of problems, we should have been careful at the same time to distinguish between two things which are very apt to be confused in political discussions—ultimate importance and immediate urgency.
We ought to have taken into our reckoning both the present state of the world and the permanent nature of man—all the stuff that dreams and wars are made on. We desired peace. We needed peace. Peace was a matter of life and death to all our hopes. If defeat should once break into the ring of our commonwealth—scattered as it is all over the world, kept together only by the finest and most delicate attachments—it must be broken irreparably. Our most immediate interest was therefore to keep defeat, and if possible, war, from bursting into our sphere—as Dutchmen by centuries of laborious vigilance have kept back the sea with dikes.
The numbers of our people in themselves were no security; nor our riches; nor even the fact that we entertained no aggressive designs. For as it was said long ago, 'it never troubles a wolf how many the sheep be.' They find no salvation in their heavy fleeces and their fat haunches; nor even in the meekness of their hearts, and in their innocence of all evil intentions.
The characteristic of this period may be summed up in one short sentence; the vast majority of the British people were bent and determined—as they had never been bent and determined before—upon leaving their country better than they had found it.
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To some this statement will seem a paradox. "Was there ever a time," they may ask, "when there had been so many evidences of popular unrest, discontent, bitterness and anger; or when there had ever appeared to be so great an inclination, on the one hand to apathy and cynicism, on the other hand to despair?"
THE RESULTS OF CONFUSION
Were all this true, it would still be no paradox; but only a natural consequence. Things are very liable to slip into this state, when men who are in earnest—knowing the facts as they exist in their respective spheres; knowing the evils at first hand; believing (very often with reason) that they understand the true remedies—find themselves baulked, and foiled, and headed off at every turn, their objects misconceived and their motives misconstrued, and the current of their wasted efforts burying itself hopelessly in the sand. Under such conditions as these, public bodies and political parties alike—confused by the multitude and congestion of issues—are apt to bestow their dangerous attentions, now on one matter which happens to dart into the limelight, now upon another; but in the general hubbub and perplexity they lose all sense, both of true proportion and natural priority. Everything is talked about; much is attempted in a piecemeal, slap-dash, impulsive fashion; inconsiderably little is brought to any conclusion whatsoever; while nothing, or next to nothing, is considered on its merits, and carried through thoughtfully to a clean and abiding settlement.... The word 'thorough' seemed to have dropped out of the political vocabulary. In an age of specialism politics alone was abandoned to the Jack-of-all-trades.
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This phenomenon—the depreciated currency of public character—was not peculiar to one party more than another. It was not even peculiar to this particular time. It has shown itself at various epochs—much in the same way as the small-pox and the plague—when favoured by insanitary conditions. The sedate Scots philosopher, Adam Smith, writing during the gloomy period which fell upon England after the glory of the great Chatham had departed, could not repress his bitterness against "that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs." It would seem as if the body politic is not unlike the human, and becomes more readily a prey to vermin, when it has sunk into a morbid condition.
Popular judgment may be trusted as a rule, and in the long run, to decide a clear issue between truth and falsehood, and to decide it in favour of the former. But it becomes perplexed, when it is called upon to discriminate between the assurances of two rival sets of showmen, whose eagerness to outbid each other in the public favour leaves truthfulness out of account. In the absence of gold, one brazen counterfeit rings very much like another. People may be suspicious of both coins; but on the whole their fancy is more readily caught by the optimist effigy than the pessimist. They may not place entire trust in the 'ever-cheerful man of sin,' with his flattery, his abounding sympathy, his flowery promises, and his undefeated hopefulness; but they prefer him at any rate to 'the melancholy Jaques,' booming maledictions with a mournful {215} constancy, like some bittern in the desolation of the mars............