Page:Problems of Empire.djvu/63

 IMPERIAL DEFENCE. shown for the government of native races in Egypt and India, make us the most unpopular Power in the world. Hitherto the burden of defending this great Empire has fallen almost exclusively on the inhabitants of the mother country. During the past two years we have added over 7,000,000l. to our Navy Estimates alone, irrespective of 14,000,000l. provided in the Naval Works Acts. In many of the Colonies, certainly in the Australasian Colonies, expenditure on defence has been cut down, and the tendency seems toward still further reduction. You have been passing through a period of severe depression. We in the old country have had a revival in material prosperity. The addition to the naval expenditure has hardly been felt, certainly not by the general body of taxpayers. We have been able to hold our own well up till now against our probable enemies, but should those enemies become more numerous at a time when commerce and industry are not so prosperous as they are now, the British taxpayer may find the burden almost too heavy for his shoulders alone. Speaking as a representative of British working men, and putting it to you as purely an abstract question, is it just that we who live in the old country should contribute twenty times what you do to the common defence? Is it right that the sons and the brothers of British workmen should uphold the British flag in every corner of the world, while, if I am to judge from what I sometimes read in Australian newspapers, it is considered unreasonable to expect an Australian to serve anywhere except in defence of Australia? Though I am a member of the Imperial Defence Committee; though I believe that it is well that we should turn these questions over in our minds, I certainly deprecate 45