In some ways we are stronger than we have been in all our long history.  We have found ourselves, and we have found our friends.  Our dead have taught the children of to-day more and better than any living teachers can teach them.  No one in this country will ever forget how the people of the Dominions, at the first note of war, sprang to arms like one man.  We must not thank or praise them; like the Navy, they regard our thanks and praise as something of an impertinence.  They are not fighting, they say, for us.  But that is how we discovered them.  They are doing much better than fighting for us, they are fighting with us, because, without a word of explanation or appeal, their ideas and ours are the same.  We never have discussed with them, and we never shall discuss, what is decent and clean and honourable in human behaviour.  A philosopher who is interested in this question can find plenty of intellectual exercise by discussing it with the Germans, Where an Englishman, a Canadian, and an Australian are met, there is no material for such a debate.

It would be extravagant to suppose that a discovery like this can leave our future relations untouched.  We now know that we are profoundly united in a union much stronger and deeper than any mechanism can produce.  I know how difficult a problem it is to hit on the best device for giving political expression to this union between States separated from one another by the whole world’s diameter, differing in their circumstances, their needs, and their outlook.  I do not dare to prescribe; but I should like to make a few remarks, and to call attention to a few points which are perhaps more present to the mind of the ordinary citizen than they are in the discussions of constitutional experts.

We must arrange for co-operation and mutual support.  If the arrangement is complicated and lengthy, we must not wait for it; we must meet and discuss our common affairs.  Ministers from the Dominions have already sat with the British Cabinet.  We can never go back on that; it is a landmark in our history.  Our Ministers must travel; if their supporters are impatient of their absence on the affairs of the Empire, they must find some less parochial set of supporters.  We have begun in the right way; the right way is not to pass laws determining what you are to do; but to do what is needful, and do it at once,—­do a lot of things, and regularize your successes by later legislation.  Now is the time, while the Empire is white-hot.  Our first need is not lawyers, but men who, feeling friendly, know how to behave as friends do.  They will not be impeached if they go beyond the letter of the law.  One act of faith is worth a hundred arguments.  This is a family affair; the habits of an affectionate and united family are the only good model.