The British Empire - Six Lectures #262008

The British Empire, as seen through German eyes at this time of international bitterness, is a creation of force and fraud, an image with feet of clay, a collection of down trodden races and communities, eager to rebel in short, an evil in the world which ought to be wiped out. No sane Englishman and no sane man in any neutral nation shares this view. But though before the present war knowledge of. The realities of the Empire was steadily growing in the United Kingdom, it was still only half knowledge or less; and, moreover, among a large section of Englishmen there was a suspicion of Empire, both the word and the thing, as implying jingoism, vainglory, and hypocrisy. Hence arose the term of Little Englander. Coupled with this suspicion there was a feeling among some, at any rate, of the working men of England, that the Empire was of no use to them, and that they had no use for the Empire. It might be the luxury of the richer classes, but how, they asked, was the working man of England benefited by the Empire It is proposed in the following pages to state as shortly, as simply, and as honestly as the writer can, how this Empire came into being, and what it means; to explain that it is not a mere creation of force and fraud; and to try to prove that it is at once the interest and the duty of all.