become, a fully self-governing state, is yet a definite and vitally important unit in the Empire, entitled to have its needs and problems considered, and its government represented, on equal terms with the rest.  The problem is an extraordinarily difficult one; perhaps the most difficult political problem that has ever faced the sons of men.  But it is essentially the same problem which has continually recurred in the history of British imperialism, though it now presents itself on a vastly greater scale, and in a far more complex form, than ever before:  it is the problem of reconciling unity with liberty and variety; of combining nationality and self-government with imperialism, without impairing the rights of either.  And beyond any doubt the most tremendous and fascinating political question which now awaits solution in the world, is the question whether the political instinct of the British peoples, and the genius of self-government, will find a way out of these difficulties, as they have found a way out of so many others.  Patience, mutual tolerance, willingness to compromise, will be required in the highest measure if the solution is to be found; but these are the qualities which self-government cultivates.

‘A thing that is wholly a sham,’ said Treitschke, speaking of the British Empire, ‘cannot in this world of ours, endure for ever.’  Why did this Empire appear to Treitschke to be ‘wholly a sham’?  Was it not because it did not answer to any definition of the word ‘Empire’ to be found in German political philosophy; because it did not mean dominion and uniformity, but liberty and variety; because it did not rest upon Force, as, in his view, every firmly established state must do; because it was not governed by a single master, whose edicts all its subjects must obey?  But for ’a thing that is wholly a sham’ men do not lay down their lives, in thousands and in hundreds of thousands, not under the pressure of compulsion, but by a willing self-devotion; for the defence of ’a thing that is wholly a sham’ men will not stream in from all the ends of the earth, abandoning their families and their careers, and offering without murmur or hesitation themselves and all they have and are.  There must be a reality in the thing that calls forth such sacrifices, a reality of the kind to which Realpolitik, with its concentration upon purely material concerns, is wholly blind:  it is the reality of an ideal of honour, and justice, and freedom.  And if the Germans have been deceived in their calculations of Realpolitik, is it not perhaps because they have learnt to regard honour, and justice, and freedom as ’things that are wholly shams’?