the true keynote of Imperial harmony in the overture to combined efforts in these words:
"I earnestly trust that the temper in which it will meet will not be. How much can each fragment of the Empire get out of the other fragments of the Empire? but, How much can each fragment of the Empire give to the common whole? It is not what we are to get each for himself; it is not what we are to give to this or to that self-governing element within our borders; it is what every self-governing fragment of this great whole can itself contribute for a common object; and the common object of defence certainly stands in the very first rank. Everybody must admit that a Conference such as I have adumbrated, and such as I hope to see, will have before it a task of almost unexampled difficulty in the history of the building up of empires. Those difficulties ought not to deter us, and, I am convinced, will not deter us. If they prove insuperable, let it at all events be through no fault of ours; let it be because the inherent difficulties in the problem are such that no human wisdom, no patriotism, however unselfish, is able to surmount them, But I, for my own part, am unwilling—indeed, unable—to contemplate so fatal, so serious an outcome. I believe if we can raise ourselves—I am not talking of this country alone; I am talking of every part of the Empire—if we can raise ourselves to that high level of unselfish patriotism of which I have spoken, in which men shall not consider merely their own particular community or their own particular industry, but shall consider the common needs of this great and varied Empire; if indeed we can raise ourselves to those heights—and I think we can—I feel confident that the experience and the wisdom which have been born of centuries of free government will not be at fault, and that in the building up of empires we shall prove ourselves in the future, as we have shown ourselves in the past, pioneers of enlightenment which the world may well be content to follow."
