That the war will in any event change the external relations is evident.  But why, if we win, should it change the political relations between the parts, except to the extent of encouraging us to conserve and develop the existing system which has given so signal an example of effective imperial unity in time of need?  Continually talking of imperial unity, we fail to recognize it when we have got it.  There is never going to be a moment when one might say “Yesterday we were not united; today the Grand Act (of Imperial Federation understood) has been signed; henceforth we are united.”

The cult of the Grand Act is a snare and a delusion.  Whatever may happen hereafter—­even the Grand Act itself—­posterity is likely to look back upon August, 1914, as the moment when the British Empire reached the zenith of its unity.  Let us remember that the existing system is not stationary, though its principle (voluntary union) may be final.  It has been developing steadily since 1902.

The Australian fleet unit, the first of the Dominion navies, which enables each to exert upon foreign policy the full weight of its importance in the empire, was not begun until 1910.  The corollary, that any Dominion Minister appointed to reside in London should have free and constant access to the British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, was only conceded in January, 1912, and has not yet been taken advantage of, even by Australia.

But the development is all true to principle.  What principle?  Voluntary co-operation, as opposed to central compulsion.  In war, as in peace, each of the Britannic nations is free to do or not to do.  But we have invoked naval and military co-ordination, with results which the Australian Navy has already exemplified (on the Emden, &c.)

Has this system of the free Commonwealth, as distinguished from the German principle of a centralized empire organized primarily for war, broken down under the supreme test, as so many of our prophets predicted?  On the contrary, it has alone saved South Africa to the empire, besides eliciting unrestricted military aid from each part.  Why change it for something diametrically opposed to its spirit, substituting compulsion for liberty, provinces for nation-States?

Sir Richard Jebb’s sentence, specifying the nature of the Australian influence on foreign policy, seems apt reply to Sir Robert Borden’s oft-repeated specification that a share in control of foreign policy should accrue to the Dominions by reason of their participation in or liability to war.  This liability really compels them to engage with all their strength, lest they comfort an enemy by abstention, or by confining their armaments to self-defense, which might and would be read as disapproval of Britain’s course, if the war were one of magnitude endangering her.  A system more powerfully requiring Great Britain to take heed that her quarrel be just, lest she be not thrice armed by approving children, can scarcely be imagined.