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 comfort an enemy by abstention, or by
confining their armaments to self-defense, which might and would be read
as disapproval of Britain's course, if the war were one of magnitude
endangering her.
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