"LEST WE FORGET!" 267

of centralised government for the whole empire, for Chamber-
lain's mind ran on more bureaucratic lines than Rhodes's. A
succession of Colonial Conferences discussed questions of imperial
defence and federation and recommended the adoption of pre-
ferential trade within the Empire if ever Great Britain should
fed able to modify her sacrosanct commercial policy of unre-
stricted imports. In the third Conference, in 1897, the Prime
Ministers of the eleven self-governing colonies passed a resolution
in favour of federation should it become geographically feasible.
It was the year of the Diamond Jubilee: Empire and the pride
of Empire were in the air. The aged Queen drove in an open
carriage to St. Paul's through streets lined by British troops from
every continent, and Kipling, as the tumult and the shouting
died away, recalled his countrymen to the age-long truth that
sets a term to all empires:

" If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
* Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe—

Such boastings as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!"

That was the climax of the new imperialism. There was an
inevitable reaction. For one thing there was the price of Empire.
During the Boer War it was at times a heavy one. And to
many people the new imperialism bore too much an air of
swashbuckling and bullying: it was overloud and protested too
much. Worse: it aroused too many financial hopes and offered
too many opportunities -for the speculator masking his sly
operations under the folds of the Union Jack. For the new fashion
of Empire attracted a rather miscellaneous crew of patriots:
Jewish financiers, gold and diamond magnates of doubtful
antecedents, shady adventurers from foreign capitals peddling
concessions in African swamps and Australian mines to a public
which, at first swept off its feet by the mingled appeal to
patriotism and cupidity, became later increasingly suspicious
of both.

In these ventures, some of which were animated by a genuine
belief in the imperial future and some merely by a shrewd business
desire to make hay while the imperial sun shone, much speculative