troops heard the call and responded nobly. Australian and Canadian
heroism was ushered into being on the grassy plains and kopjes of the
Transvaal. They may not have been good to look at and their manners were
not those of the drawing-room, but England opened her arms to those
splendid fellows from the Australian bush and was glad to use them in
her hour of need--but afterwards she forgot them. But those days were
not so soon forgotten in Australia; there are too many men still going
around with one arm or a wooden leg. The gentlemen in Downing Street,
however, have short memories, and the debt of thanks they owed the
colonies quickly slipped their minds.

For the sake of her bales of cotton, her export lists, and her Indian
possessions, the London government threw all the traditions of the
British world empire overboard and forgot that Old England's problem of
civilization was the conquest of the world for the Anglo-Saxon race. For
the sake of her London merchants, Old England betrayed Greater Britain,
which in the calculations of the London statesmen was only a
geographical conception, while the nations without credulously accepted
the decisions of English politics as the gospel of British power.

England offered the hand of fellowship to the Japanese parvenu simply
because she wanted some one to hold her Russian rival in check.

What the Manchurian campaign cost England can be figured out exactly,
to the pound and shilling. She simply purchased the downfall of Russia
with the loan of a few hundred millions to Japan--an excellent bargain.

But Sir Charles Dilke was beginning to open the people's eyes. "Another
Japanese loan," he cried, "will slip a sharp dagger into the hand of our
greatest commercial rival."

England, however, would not listen, and after the war she only drew the
bonds of the alliance closer for fear of the Japanese ants who were
creeping secretly into India and whispering into the people's ears that
the dominion of a few hundred thousand white men over three hundred
million Indians was based solely on the legend of the superiority of the
white race, a legend which Mukden and Tsushima had completely nullified.

After all, London was at liberty to adopt any policy it liked; but in
this particular case the colonies were expected to bear the entire
costs. And this was the gratitude for the aid given in South Africa for
customs favors extended to English goods at Ottawa, Cape Town, and
Melbourne. D