eed? Continually talking of imperial unity,
we fail to recognize it when we have got it. There is never
going to be a moment when one might say "Yesterday we were not
united; today the Grand Act (of Imperial Federation
understood) has been signed; henceforth we are united."

The cult of the Grand Act is a snare and a delusion. Whatever
may happen hereafter--even the Grand Act itself--posterity is
likely to look back upon August, 1914, as the moment when the
British Empire reached the zenith of its unity. Let us
remember that the existing system is not stationary, though
its principle (voluntary union) may be final. It has been
developing steadily since 1902.

The Australian fleet unit, the first of the Dominion navies,
which enables each to exert upon foreign policy the full
weight of its importance in the empire, was not begun until
1910. The corollary, that any Dominion Minister appointed to
reside in London should have free and constant access to the
British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, was only
conceded in January, 1912, and has not yet been taken
advantage of, even by Australia.

But the development is all true to principle. What principle?
Voluntary co-operation, as opposed to central compulsion. In
war, as in peace, each of the Britannic nations is free to do
or not to do. But we have invoked naval and military
co-ordination, with results which the Australian Navy has
already exemplified (on the Emden, &c.)

Has this system of the free Commonwealth, as distinguished
from the German principle of a centralized empire organized
primarily for war, broken down under the supreme test, as so
many of our prophets predicted? On the contrary, it has alone
saved South Africa to the empire, besides eliciting
unrestricted military aid from each part. Why change it for
something diametrically opposed to its spirit, substituting
compulsion for liberty, provinces for nation-States?

Sir Richard Jebb's sentence, specifying the nature of the Australian
influence on foreign policy, seems apt reply to Sir Robert Borden's
oft-repeated specification that a share in control of foreign policy
should accrue to the Dominions by reason of their participation in or
liability to war. This liability really compels them to engage with all
their strength, lest they c