CO129-446 - Others & Individuals - 1917 — Page 360

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enforce the law are first civil, then military. The civil authority very properly in all well governed States comes first! If the civil authority fails in its bounden duty to the consolence of the race we represent here in this outpost of empire, the military authority can do nothing.

That the Civil authority has lamentably failed in its duty, these two cases with the thousands of cases behind, goes without saying. I offered my life, like millions of other Englishmen, to defend the British state, our state, beaeU KO

believed that it represents all that is best, so far, in the shape of human government. That whatever by products may saue from our empire over subject races, we atand for what is best, brightest and honourable in the rule of the coloured

eoples. That our Empire is a free empire, where no slave

an breathe its air. These are really things worth fighting for. Imagine my utter surprise therefore when I read in the

cal papers that a "British Judge had set aside a day, when it could be argued in the Supreme Court of a British Colony whether slavery was a custom which could be recognised by British law, and for the futile reason, that if counsel wag right, and slavery could not be legally sanctioned, it was

a matter full of most serious consequences.

I don't feel as though I can argue about it, I feel

ss though I must fight somebody, for the disgrace attaches to

all of us. We boast that there can be no slavery under the

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