Page:The empire and the century.djvu/258

 By MAJOR-GENERAL SIR EDWARD HUTTON, K.C.M.G., Late Commanding the Military Forces of Canada (1898-1900), and of Australia (1901-1904)

question of Commercial Unity has for the last two years, in the masterful hands of Mr. Chamberlain, so filled the public eye as the basis for consolidating the Empire that the earlier proposal for the much-to-be-desired Military Unity has in a large measure been relegated to the background. Yet signs are not wanting to show that if the conditions of the War Office administration three years ago had possessed the confidence of the Mother Country and her Colonies, a National Defence System would have formed the primary element in that consolidation of the Empire which all now recognise as the question of the hour.

Mutual defence has from the outset of human existence been the keystone of the social arch. It has bound at all times in the past, as it assuredly will in the future, individuals as well as nations together by ties at once of mutual sentiment, sympathy, and self-interest. Who is there who will deny the fact that mutual protection is the primary factor which binds man to man? It would be regrettable indeed if an element in the building-up of a great Empire so wholesome and so invigorating to patriotism and self-discipline should be even temporarily abandoned for an element which is secondary only in the primitive instincts of mankind. 227