Page:Tyranny of Shams (1916).djvu/123

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POLITICAL SHAMS
107

correspondence of archaic forms the “Colonies” may grow impatient. The Colonial of the third generation, and often of the second, has very little respect for England. Candid Australians would make some of our Imperialists tremble with concern. Our colonial “governors,” of course, report that loyalty is undiminished, because a few hundred families in Melbourne and Sydney press with undiminished snobbishness to their garden-parties. These ornamental nonentities ought to be withdrawn. Perfect sincerity in our relations with the Colonies will do most to maintain the federation. The splendid co-operation of Australia and Canada in the war has shown that we have little to fear.

India and Egypt form a special problem, complicated by the fact that, in their condition of dependence, they are large and nutritious fields for the employment of our sons. It would, however, be foolish to ignore the great change that is taking place in them. Hindus tell me that, when Lord Morley became Secretary of State, the advanced Nationalists sent him a private message to the effect that they would co-operate with a humanitarian like him; and he snubbed them. A very large proportion of them are beyond the stage of being impressed by durbars, and are impatient that the masses should be kept in that childlike state of mind. We set up a fictitious “Oriental imagination,” and try to make the Orientals live down to it. The example of China and Japan ought to have destroyed our illusions about “the East.” The