behind all this will go on the deliberate philosophical discussion of the advantages to be derived from large or small, racial or regional States, which will reach the statesman at second-hand and the citizen at third-hand.  As a result, Italy, Belgium, and the German Empire succeed in establishing themselves as States resting upon a sufficient basis of patriotism, and Austria-Hungary may, when the time of stress comes, be found to have failed.

But if the task of State building in Europe during the nineteenth century was difficult, still more difficult is the task before the English statesmen of the twentieth century of creating an imperial patriotism.  We have not even a name, with any emotional associations, for the United Kingdom itself.  No Englishman is stirred by the name ‘British,’ the name ‘English’ irritates all Scotchmen, and the Irish are irritated by both alike.  Our national anthem is a peculiarly flat and uninspiring specimen of eighteenth-century opera libretto and opera music.  The little naked St. George on the gold coins, or the armorial pattern on the silver coins never inspired any one.  The new copper coinage bears, it is true, a graceful figure of Miss Hicks Beach.  But we have made it so small and ladylike that it has none of the emotional force of the glorious portrait heads of France or Switzerland.

The only personification of his nation which the artisan of Oldham or Middlesbrough can recognise is the picture of John Bull as a fat, brutal, early nineteenth-century Midland farmer.  One of our national symbols alone, the ‘Union Jack,’ though it is as destitute of beauty as a patchwork quilt, is fairly satisfactory.  But all its associations so far are with naval warfare.

When we go outside the United Kingdom we are in still worse case.  ’The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland together with its Colonies and Dependencies’ has no shorter or more inspiring name.  Throughout the Colonial Conference of 1907 statesmen and leader writers tried every expedient of periphrasis and allusion to avoid hurting any one’s feelings even by using such a term as ‘British Empire.’  To the Sydney Bulletin, and to the caricaturists of Europe, the fact that any territory on the map of the world is coloured red still recalls nothing but the little greedy eyes, huge mouth, and gorilla hands of ’John Bull.’

If, again, the young Boer or Hindoo or ex-American Canadian asks himself what is the meaning of membership (’citizenship,’ as applied to five-sixths of the inhabitants of the Empire, would be misleading) of the Empire, he finds it extraordinarily difficult to give an answer.  When he goes deeper and asks for what purpose the Empire exists, he is apt to be told that the inhabitants of Great Britain conquered half the world in a fit of absence of mind and have not yet had time to think out an ex post facto justification for so doing.  The only product of memory or reflection that can stir in him the emotion of patriotism is the statement that so far the tradition of the Empire has been to encourage and trust to political freedom.  But political freedom, even in its noblest form, is a negative quality, and the word is apt to bear different meanings in Bengal and Rhodesia and Australia.