Page:The empire and the century.djvu/64

 strong kind will be formed. Strong nations arose early in Western Europe because its sea-bounded and well-defined countries were like so many moulds in which raw material could be pressed into shape. The British Empire, regarded as a whole, has none of these bonds of union. There is, indeed, diffused through the world, the race of British breed, settling and colonizing in some lands, ruling and trading in others, and held together by kinship and correspondence and newspapers and literature and societies and sports and temperament. But in lands where it trades and rules, this race is an infinitesimally small part of the population. Where it colonizes it tends to break up, as the British-born grow few in proportion to the colonial-born, into distinct nations, with distinct characters and feelings. Contemporary individuals, as they grow older, grow less like each other, and so do nations. The interest of the Australian in British politics, and even in British sport, becomes dim beside the more vivid interest of the close-at-hand. Churches do something—Anglicans and Wesleyans maintain communications; and there is, indeed, every appearance of the rise of an Imperial Anglican Church, with its centre at Canterbury. Yet no one ecclesiastical organization binds together the British so much as the Orthodox Church holds together the Russian race. A large section of the Christian population of the British Empire—perhaps a fifth—belongs to a Church which has its centre, not in England, but at Rome, and is a bond of union, not between inhabitants of the British Empire, but between sections of all nations, cutting diagonally across every patriotism. Religion is a cause of separation, not of union, between the Christians, Mohammedans, Hindoos, Buddhists, and Pagans, of the Empire. Then, again, the inhabitants of the Empire have but dimly the feeling that they belong to a single political organization. The native of India sees close at hand the great officialdom by which he is directly governed. The free Colonies have their own legislation, ministers, parties, and questions. Increased rapidity of