Page:Problems of Empire.djvu/94

PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE. Colonies to the maintenance of the Australian Squadron, and the man would have been rash indeed who ventured to predict that that within three short years Australia would put forth the exertions she has made to assist the mother country in her time of stress and trial.

To trace in similar detail the growth of the feeling of loyalty to the Imperial connection in the other Colonies would take too long. Canadians and New Zealanders, as well as Australians and Afrikanders, played their part in the struggle for British ideas of liberty in South Africa. In the Square at Pretoria, when it was occupied by Lord Roberts' army, there stood a pediment designed to receive a statue of Mr. Kruger. Some favoured the idea that on it should be erected a statue of our beloved Queen Victoria. Others, and they were in the majority, advocated that the statue of Mr. Kruger should be erected as originally intended by its donor, and that the pediment should bear the inscription, 'To the Federator of the British Empire.' The South African War has not federated the British Empire, but it does represent the realisation of the idea of Imperial unity, and it has convinced the British peoples, as nothing else could have done, that on Imperial Federtion in some shape or other depends the future well-being, nay, even the very existence of the Empire.

Before dealing with Federation in its constitutional aspect, a few words must be said from the points of view of trade and of defence.

Commercial, on the basis of free trade within the Empire, is at present out of the question, because the greater part of the revenue of the Colonies is raised from customs duties, and it would be impossible 76