y 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 life-blood and sufferings of some, on the suffrance 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 every one 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 colouring material for the world-wide
canvas. If we take away India, Egypt and the other coloured 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 coloured 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 that accorded to most
foreigners.

The people of India far out number 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 as favourable terms of entry into that British possession
as the Japanese enjoyed.

They pointed out that a Japanese could enter Canada on showing that he
held from six pounds to ten pounds, but that no British Indian could
land unless he had forty pounds and had come direct from India,--a
physical impossibility, since no direct communication exists. But they
went further, for they showed that their "citizenship" of the British
Empire entailed penalties that no foreign state anywhere imposed upon
them.

"We appeal," they said, "and most forcibly bring to your notice
that no such discriminating laws are existing against us in foreign
countries like the United States of America, Germany, Japan, an