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Pillars of Empire (1918) LLTVRS OP EMPIRE W. L.& cJ. E.COVRT/S EY^ PILLARS OF EMPIRE """^^ yC^^:^ ^>*-=i^^ PILLARS OF EMPIRE STUDIES & IMPRESSIONS BY W. L. & J. E. COURTNEY DRAWINGS BY CLIVE GARDINER They buihied better than they knew; The conscious stone to beauty grew. Emerson,. JARROLDS PUBLISHERS (LONDON) LIMITED C^ T t * r r » I am greatly indebted to my wife for material assistance in writing this book, which, without her help, could not have been completed. I therefore desire to associate her name with mine on the title-page. London, September 1918. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION : — I. POLITICIANS AND STATESMEN 7 II. IMPERIALISM AND EMPIRE 25 CANADA CHAPTER I. LORD DORCHESTER 33 n. LORD DURHAM 44 III. SIR JOHN MACDONALD 58 IV. LORD STRATHCONA 70 V. SIR WILFRID LAURIER 79 VI. SIR ROBERT BORDEN 86 SOUTH AFRICA I. AFRICAN EXPLORERS . 93 II. SIR GEORGE GREY 102 III. SIR BARTLE FRERE 117 ^IV. CECIL JOHN RHODES . 130 ^ V. ALFRED MILNER AND JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 149 VI. GENERAL LOUIS BOTHA 162 VIL GENERAL SMUTS . 177 CONTENTS AUSTRALASIA CHAPTER PAGE EXPLORERS . I93 I. CAPTAIN JAMES COOK AND THE EARLY . • .201 . II. SIR HENRY PARKES . III. COMMONWEALTH PREMIERS . 2C8 IV. SEDDON AND HIS SUCCESSORS . • . 220 EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN 229 I. GENERAL GORDON ..... II. LORD CROMER . • 244 III. LORD KITCHENER OF KHARTOUM . 259 INDIA AND THE FAR EAST I. LORD CLIVE .... 273 II. THE HEROES OF THE MUTINY 284 III. LORD CURZON .... 298 lY. RAJAH BROOKE AND STAMFORD RAFFLES 313 BOOKS CONSULTED 320 INDEX ..... 323 ILLUSTRATIONS RT. HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE Frontispiece FACING PAGE MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN . i8 LORD STRATHCONA • 70 SIR ROBERT BORDEN . 86 LORD MILNER . 149 GENERAL LOUIS BOTHA . 162 GENERAL SMUTS . 177 MR. ANDREW FISHER . 213 MR. W. M. HUGHES . 217 MR. RICHARD J. SEDDON . 220 LORD CROMER . 244 LORD CURZON . 298 PILLARS OF EMPIRE INTRODUCTION (1) Politicians and Statesmen. In a book which is dedicated to Empire Builders it is obviously inexpedient to include mere poUticians. Mere pohticians are for the most part concerned with essentially minor interests. Most days they have to battle with various divisions of the political community violently divided in their aims and their theories—some of them active on purely party grounds, others animated by personal rivalry, none of them supremely anxious as to the general structure and mutual relations of that great aggre- gate of free nations which we call the British Empire. Though this would apply to the majority of those who make their voices heard in the House of Commons, or who employ their eloquence on pro- vincial platforms, it would not be true, of course, of leaders, who are bound to have wider aims. If we look at the present position, which is obviously one of transition, we see that while nearly all the activities of Parliament are concerned with matters, so to speak, of internal policy, such as, to name the capital instance, the future relations of Ireland towards Great Britain, 8 PILLARS OF EMPIRE or, in a smaller degree, Electoral Reform, the men who stand in the forefront of the nation's hopes and resources are bound to consider wider issues, affecting the relationship of Great Britain towards its Allies in the war and towards the independent dominions over the seas. Mr. Bonar Law, for instance, has, whether he likes it or no, to employ such energies as he can spare from the War Cabinet to the Chancellor- ship of the Exchequer and the leadership of the House of Commons. Lord Curzon has administrative duties to discharge in reference to the House of Lords. Lord Milner is occupied Vvith the details of the War Ofhce. But there are others who are forced to look farther afield. There is Mr. Balfour, for instance, who pre- sides over the Foreign Office, and who attempts to carry out his duties with sufficient detachment from ordinary politics to enable him to take an Imperial view of our obhgations. There is Mr. Asquith, v/ho is the head of something which approaches a regular Opposi- tion, but who has constantly to check purely sectional activities with a view to the larger interests of the State. And there is also, most important of all, Mr. Lloyd George, who, as Prime Minister, represents Great Britain abroad, and in virtue of his position has to keep in touch at once with the War Cabinet, the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office, to say nothing of those various departments v/hich have been created to super- intend the work of munitions and regulate the food of the people. Mr. Balfour. Never was there so curiously discordant a trio as Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Asquith, and Mr. Balfour. I use the word ** discordant " solely in view of the natural characteristics of the three men involved. Two of them are bound to work together because they belong INTRODUCTION 9 to the same administration. The third holds a more irregular position, as at once a critic and a dispossessed Premier. Mr. Balfour's temperament we know from much past experience. His instincts are aristocratic, his interests are at least as much philosophical and literary as political. He is a believer in the old diplomacy, and in all the replies which are extorted from him at St. Stephen's he m.anifests a real reluctance to giving even the smallest possible information to the country at large. He does this not because he mistrusts the democracy, but because he thinks the democracy ought to be led. Hov/ever well the people mean, they are for the most part ignorant and require guidance. His own views remain in a fluid state, or at least such is the impression which his curiously remote personality gives to the public at large. Is he an Imperialist ? Yes and no. Does he believe in Free Trade or Pro- tection ? We are not quite sure. Does he accept the dream of a future League of Nations, empowered to settle all the differences and arrange the future position of the members of the great European com- munity ? Here, too, it is only possible to give a guarded reply. Something of the dilettantism of the artist, something of the disdain of a thinker, appears in all his public career, while the community, who like clear definitions, are puzzled and baffied by the author of a book so significantly entitled Philosophic Doubt— who brings to bear on poUtical problems mam/ of those fine metaphysical distinctions, appropriate in a philo- sophical treatise but wholly out of place amid the broad currents of national life. Mr. Balfour has no great hold on the democracy, yet instinctively the democracy believes him to be an honest man, absolutely exempt from all temptations which might beset the partisan, serenely disdainful of all the vulgarity of sectional ambitions. Foreign nations trust Mr. Balfour, but he 10 PILLARS OF EMPIRE is in no sense a leader. The people admire him at a distance, while for himself he asks neither for admiration nor praise. He is a characteristic example of the philosopher turned politician, while at the same time he w^arns us how little of Plato's dream of the proper government of States can be realized under modern conditions. Mr. Asquith, Mr. Asquith is the least interesting of the three statesmen whom we have mentioned. He is a good type of the ordinary party leader, eloquent in that style of eloquence which at most procures assent but rarely provokes enthusiasm, possessed of a balanced and antithetical style which pleases the ear but does not convince the understanding. He is a lawyer who likes clarity of judgment and plainness of statement. He has the faults of a lawyer. He is an apt exponent of professionalism, who, when once he seems to have his finger on the pulse of the nation, ultimately dis- appoints his very admirers, because of a certain narrow- ness of vision combined with a hard and dry intellectual force. In a serious crisis he is wanting in driving power He takes some time to make up his mind, and when at last his mind is made up, the opportunity for its exercise is wellnigh past. He has admirable virtues —of serenity, of self-possession, of self-control—he does not act in a hurry, even when circumstances seem to demand a certain precipitateness. He is an excellent representative of the higher type of the bourgeois intelligence, a leader of the great middle class which, as we have been so often assured, has made England what it is, and which is in a sense responsible for its want of imagination, its poverty of vision. It is not his fault that he has been made the leader in an attack on Mr, Lloyd George, marked by an unscrupulous INTRODUCTION ii use of not the most estimable means. As a matter of fact he is a great deal better than the Liberal cohort whom he leads, far more inclined than they are to do justice to his opponents, careful and discriminating where they are impulsive and unjust. He would be a great leader of the Liberal Party in normal times ; in abnormal times, when men do not care for party distinctions, his activities are ineffectual. Mr. Lloyd George. If Mr. Balfour is a philosopher and Mr. Asquith is a lawj^er, Mr. Lloyd George is above all a man of action. So much we must begin by sajdng, although it is wholly inadequate as a description. Mr. Lloyd George pos- sesses a daemonic energy and is a mass of activities. When other of his contemporaries are inclined to rest on their laurels, or else require a certain amount of time in which to adapt themselves to a changing environ- ment, the Prime Minister has an alertness which baffles all prophecy and which sometimes realizes a situation before it has occurred.
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