Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/80

 74 greatness of England, as they beheld it. imposing, powerful and triumphant, existed not on the rocky base they believed they saw, but on the object, sacked, impoverished and bled, they never saw. And so it is to-day. The British Empire is the great illusion. Resembling in much the Holy Roman Empire it is not British, it is not an Empire, and assuredly it is not holy. It lives on the lifeblood and sufferings of some, on the sufferance and mutual jealousy of others, and on the fixed illusion of all. Rather is it a great Mendicity Institute. England now, instead of "robbing from Pole to Pole," as John Mitchel once defined her activities, goes begging from Pole to Pole, that all and everyone shall give her a helping hand to keep the plunder. Chins, Goorkhas, Sikhs, Malays, Irish, Chinese, South African Dutch, Australasians, Maoris, Canadians, Japanese, and finally "Uncle Sam"—these are the main components that when skilfully mixed from London, furnish the coloring material for the world-wide canvas. If we take away India, Egypt, and the other colored races, the white population that remains is greatly inferior to the population of Germany, and instead of being a compact, indivisible whole, consists of a number of widely scattered and separated communities, each with separate and absorbing problems of its own, and more than one of them British neither in race, speech, nor affection.

Moreover, if we turn to the colored races we find that the great mass of the subjects of this Empire have less rights within it than they possess outside its boundaries, and occupy there a lower status than accorded to most foreigners.

The people of India far outnumber all other citizens of the British Empire put together, and yet we find the British Indians resident in Canada, to take but one instance, petitioning the Imperial Government in 1910 for