The War and Unity Part 8

There I believe you have put in the plainest and gentlest terms the working of the working cla.s.s mind as it is to-day. The country has given them more opportunities of education. When they were less educated, or, if I may say so, more ignorant than they are now, they were naturally more submissive and content with conditions the cause of which they so little understood. You cannot send the children of the poor to school, and improve your State agencies for education, and increase the millions annually which the country is ready to spend in teaching the ma.s.ses of the people more than they knew before, and expect those ma.s.ses to remain content with the economic and social conditions which even disturbed their more ignorant fathers. In short, the more you educate and train the working cla.s.ses, the more naturally you bring them to the point of revolt against conditions which are inhuman or unfair, or which cannot be brought to square with the higher standard of education which they may receive. I am sure when the community come to understand that it is a natural and even a proper sense of revolt on the part of the ma.s.ses of the people they will not regret their education. Out of all this feeling of discontent in the minds of the industrial population there has in the last thirty odd years grown very strong organisation. The Trade Union movement, which I mention first as a very great factor in all these matters, is a most powerful and important factor, and the country will have to pay greater regard to the steps which Trade Unionism may take than the country has been disposed previously to do. The Trade Union movement was stimulated and developed by the conditions which it was brought into being to remedy. The Trade Union was not the growth of mere agitation. The average Briton must be convinced that there is something really wrong before he will try to remedy it at all, and you cannot by lectures, and by telling the people that they have been and are being oppressed, stir the people of this country to any resistance.

Particularly you cannot get them to pay a contribution for it. It was because of the experience of the ma.s.s of the workers, their low wages and long hours and the bad conditions of employment, that they organised and used the might that comes from numbers, and paid contributions which in the sum total now amount to many millions of pounds in the way of reserve funds. No apology was needed for the working cla.s.ses and no defence is required for this step taken by the workers to unite themselves in Trade Unions, and thereby secure by the unity of numbers the power which, acting singly, it was impossible for them to exercise.

This Trade Union movement is quite alive to the division which exists among our cla.s.ses, and I am going to suggest that the movement might be used, might be properly employed, in obtaining that unity of cla.s.ses which we are here to consider.

Well, then, we may, whilst not overlooking other helpful activities of a large number of people in this country, seek this unity among three main divisions of our people, viz. (_a_) in industries, (_b_) in agriculture, and (_c_) in businesses. Given unity of interest and oneness of purpose and aim in those three broad divisions of the nation, the rest must be attracted and brought into harmony by mere force of example, if nothing else, with the unity which might be secured in the three broad divisions to which I have referred. One of the hopeful things, the significant things, recently uttered in other quarters from which I am going to quote, is clearly seeking this tendency to unity instead of the different interests and cla.s.ses being driven by the waste and folly of the disuniting lines upon which so far we have persisted. I observe that only a few days ago Lord Selborne, who is one of our princ.i.p.al mouthpieces on agricultural matters, presided at a new body called into existence within the past few weeks and to be known as the National Agricultural Council. Now, that is not a body which will consist of landowners, or of farmers, or of farm workers; it is a body to consist of all three. The landowners, the farmers, and the agricultural workers have come to recognise that they all have something in common touching agriculture, touching the trade or industry in which they are brought into close touch day by day. I know as a matter of fact that only a very few years ago the Farmers' Union would not tolerate the idea of the farm workers having a union, and the land workers looked with real dread upon the farmers having a union, and now all three have come to the stage when they agree to join in one Council, and, though it was admitted that the interests of those three cla.s.ses were primarily in conflict, it was recognised that by holding meetings, by the representatives of all these quite distinct interests frequently coming together, much good might be done. For what? As they say, for agriculture. So, though none of them will forfeit any rightful interest anyone of them may have in the pursuit of a special claim, they will all recognise a higher sense of duty, and feel there is an obligation upon them to make agriculture in this country a greater thing not only for themselves as the three partners, but for the ma.s.s of the community at large. And if it is necessary to do that in the farmers' interest or the landowners'

interest, it was at least as necessary to do it in the interest of the agricultural worker, and I put his claim first, not because he is the sole contributor to any yield that may come from the land, but because he is the most numerous body, and numbers in this as in other respects may well be the determining factor; and because if he withholds his labour there will be none of the fruit of the soil for which we look year after year. I follow up this statement by an authoritative one from another quarter. Lord Lee, who as we know was the Director of the Food Production Department at the Board of Agriculture, spoke some time ago on this aspect of the case, and said: "Take the agricultural labourer for example. Does anyone suppose, or suggest, that he should return from the trenches--where he has distinguished himself in a way unsurpa.s.sed by any other cla.s.s in the community--to the old miserable conditions under which, in most parts of the country, he was under-paid, wretchedly housed, and denied almost any pleasure in life, except such as the public house could offer him? Those conditions were a disgrace to the country, and I shall never be content until they are swept away for ever. I do not say this only in the interest of the man himself; it is necessary these conditions should go, in the best interests not merely of the labourer but of the farmer and of agriculture." So it may be that unity and oneness of purpose and of action will be driven upon us as one of the bye-products of war conditions. For your simple plain agricultural worker will come back feeling that as he has fought for the liberties of his country he will be ent.i.tled to enjoy a little more of it than ever before, that if the land is to be freed from designs of the tyrant abroad it must be freed also from any wrong at home, and that he must have a larger share in the fruits of his labour than he has enjoyed before. My own view is that you will not on that account make the farm worker a less efficient harvestman, but you will make him a happier father, you will be making him a more contented citizen, and may make him a more profitable worker than he has ever been.

Various remedies have been tried or thought of to give effect to what are our common aspirations. One I have seen referred to frequently is one I would like to see always avoided. It is the remedy of placing before workmen as a necessity a greatly increased output from their manual labour in the future; not that I am opposed to an increased output, but I am not going to demand it as part of the bargain which should itself be arranged and carried out, even if it did not necessarily secure for us any greater sum total of wealth than we now enjoy; for poor as we may have accounted ourselves we have seen in the past few years how vastly we can spend and lend in support of any high purpose to which the country may devote itself. Poverty can never again be claimed by the nation as a whole whenever there is a proper and reasonable demand for any social change or reform which may be necessary and proper. Men are asking for a greater yield, for a greater output, for building up our wealth higher than ever before, so as to repair the ravages of the war, if for no other purpose. With all those objects I agree, but we must not make them as terms to the worker in exchange for those conditions of unity which we are asking our workers to arrange with us. Greater output, increased efficiency, a bigger and better return of wealth from industrial and agricultural energy, can well come out of a better working system, a better rearrangement of combined effort, a more extensive use of machinery, a more satisfactory sub-division of labour, a wider employment of the personal experience and technical skill of our industrial cla.s.ses, a higher state of administrative efficiency and management in the workshops, the creation of a better and more humane atmosphere in the workshops. Out of all of these things a greater yield of wealth could be produced, and it is along those lines we must go in order not merely to convert but to convince the workman that he is not being used as a mere tool for some ulterior end for the benefit of some smaller cla.s.s in the country. It has been said by some that Trade Union restrictions and limitations must go. I candidly admit there have been Trade Union regulations and conditions which perhaps have stood in the way of some increased output, but I am not here to apologise for Trade Union rules. Every cla.s.s has its regulations and rules. The more powerful and the more wealthy the cla.s.s the more rigid and stringent those rules have been. However, the cla.s.s which was most in need of regulations and rules, the working cla.s.s, was the first to set the example of setting them aside as a general war measure when the country called upon the workers to take action of that kind during 1915. We must, therefore, keep in mind the fact that workmen are naturally suspicious. That suspicion is the growth of the workshop system, into which I have not now the time to go, and we must avoid causing the workman to suspect that our unity, the unity we are seeking among cla.s.ses, is a mere device for getting him to work harder and produce greater wealth and perhaps labour even longer hours than ever.

The first great step towards this unity is to secure the good will of the Trade Unions. Having secured that, the next thing is to proceed upon lines which will bring at once home to the individual workman in the workshop some sense of responsibility with regard to the response which he must make to the appeal which we put before him. In short, better relations must precede any first step that could effectively be taken to secure this greater unity, and better relations are impossible in industry until we have given the individual workman a greater sense of responsibility of what he is in the workshop for. Let me briefly outline how that might be secured. It was put, I think, quite eloquently if simply in an address to the Trade Union Congress a short time ago by the President of the Congress, who said that the workman wanted a voice in the daily management of the employment in which he spends his working life, in the atmosphere and in the conditions under which he has to work, in the hours of beginning and ending work, in the conditions of remuneration, and even in the manners and practices of the foremen with whom he had to be in contact. "In all these matters," said the President, "workmen have a right to a voice--even to an equal voice--with the management itself." I know that is a big, and to some an extravagant claim to make, but to set it aside or ignore it is to provoke and invite further trouble. Industry can no longer be run for the profit which it produces, or even because of the wealth which collective energy can make. That, indeed, was the mistake out of which, as I said at the beginning, this disunion, and this suspicion, and this selfishness, have grown. We have had greatly to modify our doctrines of political economy during the course of the war, and all the things which many teachers told us never could be done have come as natural to us under war conditions which we could not resist, and of which we were the creatures. Where now is the law of supply and demand? Indeed, if the law of supply and demand were operating at this moment, there are few workmen in the country who would not be receiving many, many pounds more a week than they are. The workman is not paid to-day according to the demand for his labour. A very much higher obligation decides for him what his remuneration is to be. I have in mind, of course, the fact that a considerable number of workers, who are employed upon munition services and so on, are enjoying very high wages, but that is not at all true of the ma.s.ses of the industrial population, and we ought not to be deceived by these rare instances which are quoted of men coming out of the workshop with __20 or __30. Speaking of the industrial population in the main, what was the outstanding economic doctrine?--the doctrine that the demand for labour and the volume for supplying that demand determined the remuneration. That doctrine has had to go by the board like so many other things that could not exist under war pressure.

Then, how are we to give effect to this general workshop aspiration for bringing the workman into closer unity with the conditions which determine that part of his life which is the bread-winning part, for which he has to turn out in the morning early and often return home late in the evening? There was established some time ago what can be described as a quite responsible committee to report upon how better relations not only between employers and employed through their a.s.sociations, but in regard to employers and employed in the workshops, might be established. That committee issued the report commonly known to us now as the Whitley Report, of which I am quite sure more will be heard in a few years. The men who had to frame that report were drawn from the two extremes of the employers and trade unions. We had men with very advanced views, like Mr Smillie, on the one hand, and we had quite powerful employers of labour, like Sir Gilbert Claughton and Sir William Carter, on the other. I had the privilege of sitting on that committee, and for some months we laboured to frame some definite terms which might be accepted by those who were concerned in our recommendations. I very often hear the suggestion that people will have little of it because it is not ideal, not grand or great enough, but we have to come down to the earth upon these matters, and we have to recommend only what we feel is likely to be accepted lest our labour should be wasted. We must avoid, therefore, throwing our aims too high, and we must suggest only what practical business men and workmen are likely seriously to consider.

Having decided to reach that conclusion, and feeling the sense of responsibility which, opposed as so many of us were to each other, drove us to reach a conclusion, we expressed ourselves in these terms: "We are convinced that a permanent improvement in the relations between employers and employed must be founded upon something other than a cash basis. What is wanted is that the workpeople should have a greater opportunity of partic.i.p.ating in the discussion upon an adjustment of those parts of industry by which they are most affected. For securing improvement in the relations between employers and employed, it is essential that any proposals put forward should offer to workpeople the means of attaining improved conditions of employment and a higher standard of comfort generally, and involve the enlistment of their active and continuous co-operation in the promotion of industry."

Previously, the view was that the workman had nothing whatever to do with this phase of the management of business, and that is a phrase still very much used. We make no claim in this report that workmen should have the right to interfere in the higher realms of business management, in, say, finance, in the general higher details of organisation, in the extension of works, in all those more important and urgent matters which must come before the board of managers or the manager himself. These are things which belong properly and exclusively to those who have the responsibility of managing our great industries, but in all the other things affecting the conditions of the workman, the manner in which he is to be treated, hours, wages, conditions of employment, relations between section and section, and working division and working division, all those things which were regarded previously as the private monopoly of the foreman or manager must in future become the common concern of the workmen collectively, and they must have some voice in how these things are to be settled. The country and its industries, of course, may refuse to hear that voice, but really we have to choose between reconciling workmen to a given system of industry or finding workmen in perpetual revolt against their conditions. And it will pay the country to concede a great deal, not only for peace in the workshop but for a higher standard of peace generally in the whole community. The appeal that must be made to the workman must be followed up by asking him to receive it in a very different spirit from the spirit sometimes shewn in certain workshops. I am not here by any means to pour praise altogether upon the working cla.s.ses, and I am conscious of the mistakes and wrongs which have sometimes been done in their names, and I am therefore anxious that the spirit of the workshop should be so tempered and altered as to be fit to receive and make the best use of the approaches which are to be made to it to partic.i.p.ate in workshop management upon the lines which I have indicated.

So this appeal which has been made by the Whitley committee, and which has been followed up by some other departments of government, is put as an appeal to the common-sense and reason of the men in the workshop, and does not rest upon any of the many agencies which have been employed previously in the pursuit of definite trade union ends. This spirit can be fostered only when the ma.s.ses of workmen are reached by the consciousness that they themselves are being called upon to share in the undertakings of which they are so important a part. The importance of workmen has been revealed in a most startling way during the period of the war, and the war has shewn in many trades that recurring differences between capital and labour can be adjusted without strikes and without lock-outs if methods are provided in the workshop which are acceptable to both sides, and are made to operate fairly and satisfactorily between the different interests. Think how important the workman has become because of the war. Consider how much the workman is now pressed and drawn into all manner of services which previously he could either remain in or leave at his will. The war has made such a demand upon national industrial energy that there is no service now for which there is not a demand. Indeed, you have seen the effect in that services in the workshop include men who previously would have been ashamed to have had it known that they had ever soiled their hands at any toil at all, but who have been glad to get a place in the workshop because it was work of national importance. War experience has shewn us how high manual service stands in the grades of service which can be rendered for community interest. This new spirit does not appeal to force as a means of settling differences, nor to compulsory arbitration, nor to the authority of the State, nor to the power of organisation on either side. It is an appeal to reason, an approach to both sides to act in a.s.sociation on lines which will give freedom, self-respect, and security to both sides, whilst enabling each of them to submit to the other what it feels is best for the joint advancement of the trade and those engaged in it. In short, I would like to see inside the gates of every workshop the cultivation of the same spirit in British industry as has been hinted at already as the first essential for the future development of agriculture in England. Those processes of calling in the individual workman through committees, to which I will refer briefly in a moment, are not intended to take the place of the great organisations.

They are to be supplementary to the Trade Unions, and are not intended to supplant them.

Trades Union leaders.h.i.+p has changed hands to a great extent during the past year or two, and the virtual leaders of the men are now men themselves employed at the bench and in the mine. They are exercising very great authority and influence over ma.s.ses of their fellow workmen, and often the authority, and decisions, and advice of executives and leaders are set aside and the advice of the men employed in the workshop, given to their fellow workmen as mates, is followed. So with this change, due to conditions into which we have not time to go, there must be recognised the need for applying new remedies in considering this question of improving the relations between employer and employed.

It will not do now merely to have discussions between a.s.sociation and a.s.sociation. We might improve upon that and supplement it as I have said by having discussions direct in the workshop with the workmen themselves, who would be brought into touch at once with persons who were responsible for what action must be taken. So leaders.h.i.+p having been to some extent transferred from the Trade Union to the workshop, the workman must be followed there and must be shewn how essential it is to recruit his good will and his aid in improving workshop conditions, not for the betterment of the management, but as much, if not more, for his own betterment as a workman in the shop. This may not touch certain industries in the country that are non-organised. Some of those trades, much to our shame, in former years were known as sweated industries, but even there it is found that the workers, men and women alike, are coming gradually into the trades unions, and should they not be in the trades unions to any great extent they are to be reached by other ways and means which this committee has developed. It is intended to apply to them, so as to establish the necessary machinery for better relations, the personnel of the Trades Boards Acts, those boards which, in the absence of trades unions, deal with the sweated conditions of thousands of workers employed in those sweated trades. So I have no fear myself of the non-organised trades being left altogether out of the range of the spirit to which I have referred. In addition to the committees there is to be in every district, it is proposed, a representative council, drawn from the employers and employed of the particular industry, and some scores of these councils are now being set up. In addition, there is to be in relation to every princ.i.p.al industry a national council, and many of us are now engaged in the creation of those several bodies. The public may not hear much about them, but they are the foundation upon which this structure of better relations is to rest, and, so far as we can spare some small margin of our time for those duties, considerable headway has been made in establis.h.i.+ng these different organisations.

But I attach most importance to the workshop committees, and so I want to pursue this idea a little further. What are those committees to be?

They would have to be free representative bodies, chosen by the men themselves. They could be empowered to meet the management, possessed of a sense of responsibility, to discuss in their own homely way matters which would have to be settled between them. Indeed, we know from experience that many of the big trade disputes in this country have grown out of trifles, out of small nothings comparatively, which could well have been settled inside the workshop gates by bringing master and man together, empowered to discuss matters which both understand as matters of personal experience. The committees when created, in this atmosphere and spirit to which I refer, would exist not in rebellion against the trade unions or against the trade union system, or exist as being in revolt against the management of the works, or the employer of labour. The committees would be vested with responsibility for negotiations. They would be able to use the personal knowledge derived from contact with the questions arising day by day. They would develop a sense of independence and a sense of just dealing, so that the doctrine of "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work" should apply not only to the wages but to the work to be done, a thing which sometimes does not occur. These committees could check the driving methods of some persons in authority, and, whilst getting the best from those who are above them, they could give the best, as I am sure they would provided the spirit is created, from the workmen in return for the fairer treatment they would enjoy. These committees could deal not only with manual service and ordinary work and wage questions; they could develop a better use of industrial capacity and technical knowledge in matters of workshop life. But the spirit is everything, and the best desires of equitable workshop management could find expression through those committees if they were created. The committees would give a chance to the many workmen who now talk a great deal about democracy to express that democracy through the persons of the workmen themselves. I fear there are many of our friends in the labour movement, as we term it, who are given freely to talking of democracy without clearly understanding all that is covered in that term. It is a term which, it is a pleasure to see, has recently found its way not merely into the phrases of statesmen, but into the King's speech itself. We are now speaking commonly of all the sacrifices that are being made, of all the blood and treasure that is being spilt, in order to have a wholesome democratic system of world government. Well, we must begin in the workshops, for you cannot have peace on a large scale the country over, or between nation and nation, unless you have peace in our places of employment.

They are the starting points and there it is that your contented millions must first be found. If they are not happy and if they are not at ease in connexion with their national service, you cannot expect any of those larger results for which highminded statesmen are seeking the world over.

Upon two main lines, in my judgment, democracy will require the most sane guidance and most sagacious advice which its leaders are capable of giving to it. It will not do for leaders merely to say that the future of the world must be decided, not by diplomats or thrones or Kaisers, but by the will of peoples. The will of peoples can find enduring and beneficial expression only when that will seeks social change by reasonable and calculated instalments, and not by any violent act of revolution. Peaceful voters on their way to the ballot boxes and properly formulated principles will in the end go further than fire and sword in the internal affairs of a nation. I say this because of the loose talk we have heard from many labour platforms recently of revolution and its benefits. Revolution may well be in any country the beginning and not the end of internal troubles, often expressed in a more painful and more violent form than ever. We need only look at our former great partner, Russia, to find full confirmation of all I have now implied. The red flag marches with the machine gun and the black cap when a certain stage of physical revolt is reached. The theory of new methods of life can only find rational application when democracy is wisely guided in taking slow but sure steps peacefully to turn its theories into an applied system, wherein the people of a nation and not merely a section or a cla.s.s shall find their proper place and security for service, and find an a.s.sured existence under conditions of comfort for themselves and advantage to the State. Democratic leaders must tell these things to the people time after time if need be. They must repeat them so that the ma.s.ses may understand them, because the tendency in labour has been to narrow the meaning of democracy. Democracy is not, and ought not to be, limited to those who now const.i.tute the industrial population. Democracy is not a sect or a trade union club. Democracy is wider than the confines of the manual worker. Democracy should strive to reach the highest level of morality in doctrine and aspiration. It is not a cla.s.s formula. It is a great and elevating faith which may be shared by all who believe in it. Democracy stands for the general progress of mankind and means the uplifting of men, and the liberation and unifying of nations. It does not mean the dominion of one cla.s.s over another, nor the violent wresting of position or authority by some dramatic act of physical force, which if used would still leave a nation in a state of unreconciled and contending factions. Democracy, again, is a spirit whereby vast social and economic change may be effected through a medium approaching common consent or at least by the application of the political power of the people acting through representative inst.i.tutions and resting upon ideas which majorities accept and understand. The spirit which has already accepted vast political changes can be made to apply to vast economic and industrial changes. This spirit must be cultivated by the leaders of democracy. They have now opportunities as great as their responsibilities. The success of parties, in the old sense of the term, is a trivial thing to the success of the great ends to be secured. These ends will justify the use of any const.i.tutional means for dethroning that form of power upon which privilege and the mere possession of wealth have rested. But democracy must not be duped by phrases, nor be swayed by any influence which does not lead to a lasting advance for the nation as a whole. Nor should its leaders think that fundamental and enduring changes in our social system can be reached by any short cut to which the great ma.s.s of the people have not been converted. Progress will be faster in the future if impatience and folly do not r.e.t.a.r.d it.

Having said a little with regard to the position of the poorer people, let me before I close respectfully address a few words to the richer and more favoured in the country. Should all rich folk in the country work?

That is a very plain and I dare say it will be regarded in some places as quite an impudent question. But really, rich people who have never had cause in any way to earn their living have always been a danger to the State, just as they have been the greatest instance of wicked waste to be found in any country. There is nothing more melancholy, and even degrading, to a country than the sight of educated people who have nothing to do. Wealth is the fruit of service and endeavour. Work is the only medium by which the ravages of the war can be made good. Ignorance and idleness present a most pitiable spectacle, but the most criminal of all sights is education and idleness combined. Finally, let me say that whilst I have addressed myself mainly in terms of appeal to the workers, I am not unmindful at all of the difficulties of the great employers of labour and those covered by the phrase "our Captains of Industry." I know that many of them work very hard under the greatest and most trying mental pressure, and have duties and trials unknown even to the workmen, but with those duties and trials come reliefs again unknown to the workmen--holidays, change, and rest, and the meeting of men of their own cla.s.s whose very company is an intellectual joy, so that the worst off your employer of labour as a human being may be he is far better off than the average workman. Think of the housing conditions of so many thousands, hundreds of thousands, of workmen, and how intolerable it would be for you to live under those conditions, how discontented you would be, how discontented the rich would be were it their fate to drag on an existence in some of those places which are commonly described by the term "houses." Why, the very waiting room of the employer's ordinary office is a much more cosy and pleasant place than the homes of many of the most industrious workers of England. I plead that the elements of the human order should begin to pervade the relations of the workshop, that the workman should be less of a drudge and more of a human a.s.set than he has been, that he should be brought into partners.h.i.+p in the undertaking and in the management; that incidentally he should have a more secure remuneration and not have to bear the penalties and ordeals of employment as he has had alone to bear them during times of trade depression and unemployment in previous years. The human side of the workshop has, therefore, to be built up, and you cannot hope to build it up upon any foundation of drudgery such as the workmen in the main have had to live under, and, as I have said, it will pay the country to conciliate the men on these terms. It is a high ideal, but it is attainable. I believe it is attainable because we have seen it in another sphere of sacrifice where it has already been secured. The war has brought all cla.s.ses together. In the trenches, at sea, and in all theatres of danger, men of all cla.s.ses are now labouring shoulder to shoulder. There you have had a sinking of individual interests. There you have had a common sacrifice, a common endeavour for a common cause.

Surely, as all cla.s.ses have been able to unite in their sacrifice and in their resistance of the aggression of a foreign foe, it is, I hope, not asking too much that when they come back and take their places in peaceful pursuits again, and become masters, workmen, managers, and foremen in our enterprises and businesses, when they return from danger and come back to take their places amongst us,--surely it is not too much to hope that those who are able to unite abroad will be able to unite for the ends of peace and joy here at home.

UNITY IN THE EMPIRE

By F. J. CHAMBERLAIN, C.B.E.

The word "unity" in relation to the Empire has a deeper meaning to-day than it had five years ago. Then it was a watchword, a theme for Imperial conferences and for speakers at demonstrations. The sanguine were sure, the pessimists and that great body of Britishers of moderate views and moderate faith regarded it as one of the things hoped for.

With dramatic suddenness the event clarified the situation, England awoke at war. There was no time for preliminary councils. The supreme test of the Empire had been reached. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole world watched with eagerness for the result. It was in that moment that the great discovery was made. The British Empire stood fast.

From that day until now, from end to end of the world has been seen an object lesson of unity that has justified the sanguine, and been an inspiration to the Allies. That revelation has been more inspiring because the world is aware that it is in spite of the most sinister and subtle campaign against it, planned and brilliantly executed by an enemy under the cloak of friends.h.i.+p. I do not forget the tragic circ.u.mstances of one small nation within the Empire. But Ireland has given more evidence of her faithfulness to Empire on the fields of France and Flanders than of her treachery at home, and to-day we have more reason to count her ours than has the enemy. Examine the position in cold blood, if you can, and you are still aware of a substantial, solid, and effective unity running round the Empire, binding it in one as with a girdle of scarlet and gold.

The war is not responsible for the unity; it has only discovered or uncovered it. The storm does not establish foundations; it may reveal them. A century of building has created the structure that the storm has failed to destroy.

The British Empire is a successful experiment on the lines of the longed-for League of Nations. The race contains no more diverse elements than are found within its borders; one-third of the land surface of the world, and one-fifth of the inhabitants, have been held together in a living federation and have been kept until this day. Upon our generation rests the awful and splendid responsibility of proving to a questioning world that this unity can be made permanent, and of ill.u.s.trating how a still larger unity may be achieved.

You will forgive one or two homely pictures of our unity that cannot fail to strike the imagination. It has been our privilege to meet thousands of men from the Overseas Dominions. How many times have boys, whose forefathers emigrated from England or Scotland, who were themselves born in Australia, or on the Western plains of Canada, said, "I have been wanting to come _home_ all my life"? These islands are the "home" of the Empire, and there is no more wonderful word in the language.

Or think of Botha and s.m.u.ts, within the memory almost of the youngest of us, fighting with all their heart and mind against the Empire, and, to-day, dominant personalities proclaiming their loyalty, and proving it in unrivalled service.

Or picture, if you can, young India, pouring out her life-blood with pride and ready sacrifice, in France, in Egypt, and in Mesopotamia, for the "British Raj." The most moving scene in the history of the British Commons was on that evening in 1915, when the princes of India stood amidst the representatives of the people of the homelands and paid their homage.

How much such things mean will depend on the vision of those who hear them; but they have in them the stuff that holds the future.

This ghastly war, not of our choosing, has transferred the seats of learning for young Britain from their peaceful sites to the battlefield.

If the object of education is the cultivation of the power of thought and observation, the kindling of imagination, and the extension of knowledge; then "over there" is a University set in full array, with ghostly as well as human tutors, a curriculum without precedent, and such a body of undergraduates as Cambridge or Oxford might covet.

It is not for nothing, as regards the Empire, that your sons, the children of the East End, and the boys of Canada, Australasia, and South Africa, are meeting and mingling with Gurkha and Sikh, and with each other. They are sharing a common discipline, a common adventure, making sacrifice together. They are seeing each other with eyes from which the scales are falling, and knowledge and understanding are growing out of their contact. The farthest reaches of Empire have been brought nearer to the Empire's heart by this brotherhood in arms, and the barriers between cla.s.ses have been lowered until a man can step across them without climbing. The distance between East and West has been immeasurably shortened, whether we are thinking in terms of London, or of the Empire.

In our consideration of this whole subject we are to take the Christian standpoint. To us, the words "Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven," on Divine lips were more than a pious wish. They were a great intention, the expression of age-long purpose. We believe that the gains of the centuries--the harvest of the past which is worth conserving--have been secured by moral and spiritual conquest, rather than by military or political achievement. There may be elements in our present forms of unity which we may well allow to go by the board. The things that make for permanence will abide not only with an enlightened statesmans.h.i.+p, but with a growing understanding, an ever broadening interpretation of Christian teaching about

The Kingdom of G.o.d on earth, The Universal Fatherhood of G.o.d, and The brotherhood of man,

leading the nation to see that the knowledge of G.o.d and of His Christ is the rightful inheritance of every son of the Empire.

As these great ideals of social life have been interpreted in the life of either sovereign peoples or subject peoples, so, we believe, and only so, have bonds been forged that can be trusted to stand the strain which time and changing condition and circ.u.mstances impose.

Unity, even the Empire itself ultimately, depends, as we believe, on a broad-based statesmans.h.i.+p, carrying up the main principles of our Government to their highest power in action, and, constantly throughout the Empire, mediating those doctrines to the peoples concerned as they are able to bear them, with ever-extending inspiration and encouragement to growth and development.

Our Imperial aims are neither antagonistic to nor inconsistent with our Christian programme. That should const.i.tute a challenge to the Christian Churches, and is in itself a matter for high and solemn pride. The war has cleared the air. As stated during this period, the ideal of a federation of nations, free, independent, and at the same time interdependent, each working out its national destiny, each contributing, in terms of opportunity, to the well-being of the whole, bringing to bear on Imperial matters the heart, brain, will of the whole, gives us a picture of a Commonwealth in advance of any contemporary political programme, with the one conspicuous exception of that of the United States of America, between whom and ourselves is being established a Unity which may well be more valuable to the world at large and to ourselves than any formal Union.

Here, as we see it, is our opportunity. The Christian forces of the Empire have the onus of maintaining the national outlook at this high level. Our faith, our audacity, our leaders.h.i.+p will be needed if lesser counsels are to have no chance of prevailing. There must be no swing of the pendulum back to smaller views.

With the coming of Peace, the temptation to the Nation to take off its armour, to come down from the pedestal, to revert to pre-war conditions, to re-act in self-indulgence from the strain of war, or to let materialism defeat idealism, will be well-nigh overwhelming. To give way to that temptation will be to rob victory of any permanent values.

It will be a poor thing to have taught Germany her lesson, if we fail to learn our own.

We see no hope of successful resistance of that temptation apart from the mobilisation of the Christian forces within the Empire into an army committed to the sacred task of making the conscience of the Nation effectively Christian, leading the way in bringing about a closer approximation between the politics of the State and the programme of the Kingdom of G.o.d, and proclaiming that Kingdom at hand.

If we are agreed so far it behoves us to look for the practical implications of the position. These islands are still the heart and home of the Empire. This was the rock whence its younger peoples were hewn.

Our nation has produced the men and the machinery that govern our commonwealth. The lonely places, farthest removed from us, will be peopled largely by and through the work of children of the Old Country.

There, wherever her children go, is England.

England is a treasure house, where the very stones are eloquent. Her history, her buildings, her national and civic life, her denominations and movements are all of them of vital interest to her children. It is a place of pilgrimage and remembrance. It is more. They find here the mature growths from which their inst.i.tutions have sprung. They love our historic places, they love our crowded cities, they love our seash.o.r.es and our quiet country-side, for everywhere they go they find not only the story of our past, but that of their own. This is their spiritual home. Our art, our literature, our movements are parts of a common inheritance, and it is the pride of the Motherland that her children have never outgrown their love of the old home, their veneration for its sanctions and restraints, and that on their own homesteads they have reproduced in new settings and often in fresh forms so much that is native here.

One would like to see a larger share in this priceless inheritance offered to our peoples oversea. Think for one moment of our great Cathedrals, unique and wonderful. They can never be reproduced. They might be copied; but Canterbury and Westminster, Lincoln and Durham, York and the rest would still remain all that they are to us and to them. You cannot transplant history. In the homeland we are but trustees of these treasures, and we ought to make them the home and centre of our Imperial Christianity. In every one of them the priests of the Church in the Overseas lands should not only be seen but heard. Is there no room in Cathedral Chapters for Overseas representatives, so that in our daily services in a new and living way we may be linked together in sacrament, praise and prayer, and in the proclamation of Christian truth? One Canonry for each historic building would mean more to Unity than many resolutions at Congress. Perhaps that is as far as one ought to go in suggestion, but there are other splendid possibilities that one would love to discuss. No one thinking of Unity in the Empire can fail to rejoice in the growing desire manifest among Christian Denominations for Unity. I will not trench on another's subject beyond saying that the way to Union is Unity, and that it would be tragic if in these momentous days any stone was left unturned that would lead to better knowledge, deeper understanding and sympathy between those who name the Name that is above every name. And our people overseas have much to teach us in this matter. Over great areas of social opportunity and service the Catholic Church may act unitedly and must do so, if she is to enter on offensive warfare and not stand for another generation on the defensive.

The war has made a difference here. Men, who in the conventional days of peace rarely met, have joined hands in service. Catholic and Protestant, Churchman and Free Churchman, have found joy in fellows.h.i.+p. That does not mean that differences have disappeared, it means that, recognising and estimating their differences, it has been possible to establish a basis of co-operation, in knowledge, understanding, and sympathy, and to recognise in one another the hall-mark of Christian faith and character.

Is this to be a war measure only? or is it to be one of the great gains to be carried over into the days ahead?

One other question clamours for treatment: the problem of the evangelisation of the Empire. Christianity must be given its chance in every corner of the Empire. There may be divergent opinions as to the methods to be used, but if Christianity contains in its gospel the pearl of great price, there can be no two opinions as to the obligation that rests on us to bring to the nations federated with us this supreme gift.

Nothing can release us from that responsibility. To postpone the presentation of the Christian gospel for any of the time-honoured excuses:

(1) our pre-occupation in matters of more urgent importance elsewhere,

(2) any fear of the effects of Christianity on our political or commercial interests,