led and unsurveyed.

If the American will look to the north, he will see Canada in
approximately the phase in her material progress which the United
States had reached in, let us say, 1880 to 1885. Australia and New
Zealand are somewhat further behind; South Africa further still. Behind
that again are the various scattered portions of the Over-Sea Dominions
in divers states of political pupilhood. In some there are not even yet
the foundations on which a Constitutional or commercial structure can be
built. And while each unit has to be led or encouraged along the path of
individual development, beyond all is the great vision which every
imperially-thinking Englishman sets before himself--the vision of a
Federation of all the parts--a Federation not unlike that which the
United States has enjoyed for over a hundred years (save that Englishmen
hope that there will always be a monarchy at the centre) but which, as
has been said, is almost incomparably larger in conception than was the
Union of the States and requires correspondingly greater labour in its
accomplishment.

If the American will now consider the conditions of the growth of his
own country, he will recognise that the only thing which made that
growth possible was the fact that the people was undistracted by foreign
complications. The one great need of the nation was Peace. It was to
attain this that the policy of non-entanglement was formulated. Without
it, the people could not have devoted its energies with a single mind to
the gigantic task of its own development.

But the task before the British Empire is more gigantic; the need of
peace more urgent. It is more urgent, not merely in proportion to the
additional magnitude and complexity of the task to be done, but is
thrice multiplied by the conditions of the modern world. The British
Empire must needs achieve its industrial consolidation in the teeth of
a commercial competition a thousand times fiercer than anything which
America knew in her young days. The United States grew to greatness in a
secluded nursery. Great Britain must bring up her children in the
streets and on the high seas, under the eyes and exposed to the
seductions of the peoples of all the world.

The American is a reasoning being. A much larger portion of the American
people is habituated to reason for itself--to think independently--to
form and to abide by its individual judgment--than of any other people
in the world. No political fa