tly from hatred of the British capitalists who have
invested money in the colonies. The loss of British capital invested
in the colonies would probably be greeted with jubilation by the
Socialists. "The well-to-do sections of society in Great Britain have
found a secure and profitable outlet for their capital in loans and
advances to the colonists alike as organised communities and as
individual property-owners. But the drain for interest and dividends
to England on this account is heavy, and is severely felt at times of
depression, such as that which Australia as a whole has been suffering
from during the recent seven years of almost continuous drought. It
seems tolerably certain, therefore, that this comparative handful of
colonists, eleven millions in all, of which only four millions in
Australia, will in time to come, and as the Labour party and
Socialists gain strength, repudiate, or at any rate reduce, these
onerous obligations. It is also probable that with regard to
Australia, as the white population does not increase and England's day
as a colonising power proper is practically over (having no longer any
agricultural population to send out as emigrants), this huge territory
will not be permanently left at the sole dog-in-the-manger control of
its present handful of inhabitants. We may expect, at least, that
Australia will not be permanently able to retain its position without
an infusion of entirely fresh blood, and should other peoples require
an outlet in that direction, the present preposterous policy will have
to be abandoned."[484]

Socialists seem, on the whole, to be opposed to the federation of the
British Empire. "The Labour party approaches Imperial problems with
the politics of the industrious classes as guide on the one hand, and
the internationalism of its nature as guide on the other."[485] Its
"internationalism" apparently prevents it from approving of any
practical scheme of Imperial Federation. Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P.,
of the Labour party, has not expressed actual hostility to the Empire.
In fact, he has even declared: "Socialism did not intend to re-write
history. It accepted the facts of life, and one of these facts was
that we were responsible for the Empire, and, whether we liked it or
not, we had to rule that Empire. He was overjoyed the other day to
find that at Stuttgart their Dutch and German and French friends were
fully aware of the fact that, if Socialism was to play the proper pa