CHAPTER XXIV

1900: BRITISH EMPIRE LEAGUE BANQUET IN LONDON

The fifth Annual Meeting of the British Empire League in Canada was held at Ottawa on the 14th March, 1900. It was a very successful gathering, no less than six Cabinet Ministers and five ex-Cabinet Ministers being present besides a large number of senators and members of the House of Commons.

About the middle of April I received a cablegram from Mr. Freeman Murray, Secretary of the League in London, by order of the Council, inviting me to go to England to attend a banquet which the League was giving in London on the 30th April, and I left New York by the _Campania_ on the 19th April. (The cablegram was urgent and I felt it a duty to go over.) I arrived in London on Saturday evening, the 28th. All offices were closed on Sunday, so I could see no one until Monday morning, the day of the banquet. I went down to the offices of the League early and saw Mr. Murray, and found that there was to be a great demonstration. There were to be three toasts besides that of the Queen. The first the "Prince of Wales and the Royal Family," which was to be responded to by the Prince himself, now the King; the second was to "Her Majesty's Imperial Forces," to be proposed by Lord Salisbury and responded to by me; the third "The Australian Delegates," to be proposed by Mr. Chamberlain and responded to by Sir Edmund Barton, of Australia. I saw the diagram of the tables and found that nearly six hundred of the foremost men of the Empire were to be present, including Lord Wolseley, Commander-in-Chief, Lord Lansdowne, Secretary of State for War, and several Field Marshals and Admirals of the Fleet. Sir Robert Herbert, the chairman of the executive, was with Mr. Murray, and I demurred at once to responding to the toast of "Her Majesty's Imperial Forces" in the presence of Lord Wolseley and the other Field Marshals and Admirals. I asked if Lord Wolseley had been spoken to about it, and the reply was that he had not, but that Lord Lansdowne had arranged that I was to do it, and it was all right, and no one would object. I decided I would go at once and see Lord Wolseley.

Before I left, Sir Robert Herbert and Mr. Murray consulted me about the Hon. Mr. Tarte, who was in Paris and had telegraphed that he was coming to the dinner, and wished to speak in order to make an important statement. They were both averse to changing their arrangements, on account of pressure of time. I urged them, however, to arrange for Mr. Tarte to speak, and the toast list was changed and an additional toast to the British Empire League was put on at the end of it, which Mr. Tarte was to propose, and to which the Duke of Devonshire, our chairman, was to respond.

I drove then at once to the War Office and saw Lord Wolseley, and told him what the arrangements were, and the instant he heard I was to reply for the Imperial Forces, he said, "Oh, that is capital, I did not know whether I might not have to reply and I was thinking it over in the train on my way to town. I am so glad you are to do it." I said, "Was there nothing said to you about it? I will not be a party to anything that does not show proper respect for you." His answer was, "There is no one I would rather see reply than you." I asked him if I could say I had his consent and approval. "Certainly," he replied.

When I arrived at the Hotel Cecil that evening I was warmly greeted by many old friends. Shortly after the Prince of Wales came in, and just afterwards Lord Salisbury, who spoke to the Duke of Devonshire and the Prince of Wales, and then looking about the room he saw me and crossed over at once and shook hands with me, and chatted for a few minutes in his usual friendly manner. As soon as he moved away several of my friends came to me and expressed surprise at the very cordial greeting he had given me. I said, "Why should he not?" and then they told me that he hardly ever knew or remembered anyone, and was very exclusive. I had never thought that of him, as he had always been so kind and friendly to me.

At the table I was third to the left of the chairman, the present Prince of Wales and the Duke of Fife between us. I had a good deal of conversation with the Prince and the Duke of Fife during the dinner. Among other things, the Prince said to me, "Do you not feel nervous when you have to address a gathering like this?" I said, "Not generally, sir, but I must confess I never had to tackle an outfit like this before." He seemed much amused at my western way of putting it.

I had not known anything of what I was wanted for till that morning, so I had little time to think over what I should say. I had during the afternoon thought out the general line of a short after-dinner speech, but when I sat down at the table and looked around the room I was impressed with the fact that I had been thrust into what was a great Imperial function, and I had to vary my plan and pitch my speech in a different key.

The King, then Prince of Wales, in responding to his health, made a very fine speech, and referred to the attempt to assassinate him, which had occurred not long before in Belgium. Lord Salisbury then proposed "Her Majesty's Imperial Forces" and in doing so paid me a compliment that I appreciated more than any that has ever been paid me. He ended his speech in these words: "I beg to couple with the toast the name of my friend, Colonel Denison, who has been one of the most earnest and industrious, as well as most successful supporters of the Empire for many years, as I have well and personally known."

I spoke as follows:

May it please your Royal Highness, your Grace, my Lords and Gentlemen, and Ladies--I arrived at the offices of the League this morning, and found to my astonishment that I was put down to respond to the toast of the Imperial Forces. I am, I suppose, the junior officer in this room, but I have the consent and approval of my old commander, the Commander-in-Chief, so that I have very great pleasure in responding to this toast. I am glad to be here to-night, and I thank the Council of this League for their kindness in cabling an invitation across the Atlantic to me to come. I have come 3,500 miles to be with you to-night, to show my sympathy with the cause, and to bring to you a message from the British Empire League in Canada. I need not refer to what our League has done in our country, and is still doing, in educating public opinion in favour of the great idea of the unity of the Empire. We have been doing many things in that cause lately. You know what we have done in regard to preferential trade. What we have done in giving advantages to the West Indian Colonies is another proof that we are willing to put our hands in our pockets for the benefit of our fellow-countrymen. We Canadians are to-day paying a cent a pound more for our sugar to help labour in the markets of the West Indies. We have also had a great deal to do in helping to carry out the scheme of Mr. Henniker-Heaton for Imperial Penny Postage and in this sense we have done all we could. Now I want to say a few words to-night on behalf of our League on the question of Imperial Defence. We have thought over this thing seriously, and we see at this moment, in looking around the world, a great many things that we cannot help viewing with anxiety. We see every other great nation armed to the teeth; we see a feverish anxiety on the part of these other great nations to increase their navies to a very considerable extent. All that is something which should cause us to reflect very seriously as to our position, and do all that we can as an Empire to combine all our forces, so that, if at any future time the blow comes, the full force of the British Empire can strike in the swiftest and most powerful manner possible. We know that the Navy is the main defence of us all, and we know what great strides are being made abroad in regard to the navies of the different Powers, and it is our desire--and we have educated public opinion in Canada to that point--that there shall be a Royal Naval Reserve formed among our 70,000 hardy and vigorous sailors. We have got the people, Parliament, and the Government with us, and it will only take a little time and departmental work to have this matter carried out. That is one point. There is another. We are exceedingly anxious about your food supply. I know a candid friend is not always a pleasant companion, and this may be to some an unpleasant subject, but I have come to speak to you about it. Your food supply depends on your Navy, and if anything should happen to prevent for a few months the English Navy having the control of the sea, where would you people be? Now, we know that if the Mother Country goes down, the Colonies might hold together, but still what could we do if the heart of the Empire were struck? It would be like stabbing a man to the heart, and therefore we are anxious about your food supply because we, as a part of this Empire, are interested in it. Now, then, you are putting all your eggs in one basket. You are putting everything on the control of the Navy, and I want to say this to you to-night--I am again the candid friend--that you might have the absolute control of the sea and yet, by a combination of two Powers, with an embargo on food, you could be brought to your knees. I ask if it is right that things should be left like that? Should the greatest, the wealthiest, and the most powerful Empire in history be dependent on foreigners for its food supply? I shall not make any suggestions as to what should be done, but I have been asked to urge you to give earnest consideration to the point. So much for that. Now, with reference to the contingents. We sent our contingents to this war willingly. We not only did it willingly, but before the war came on our Parliament by a unanimous vote expressed its sympathy with and approval of the conduct of the Imperial Government, and therefore we had to stand by it. We have sent our men willingly--some 3,000 of them. We would have sent a great many more if it had been a great war, and I may tell you that at the opening of the war we all misunderstood it. One of our prominent statesmen said to me, "Denison, this is only a small war," and Mr. Alexander McNeill, of the Canadian House of Commons, one of the staunchest friends of the Empire said: "This is a small war, and it is not necessary to use a steam hammer to break a nut." Another prominent statesman said to me after the ultimatum was issued: "If this were a great war and the Empire in danger we should have to send our men by the 50,000 and vote war credits by the hundred million."

When that man said that he voiced, I believe, the feelings of the Canadian people. We sent the contingents, and the men, as I said, turned out willingly. Officers resigned their commissions all over the country and went into the ranks. In fact in one regiment there was only one private. (Laughter.) I am going to let you have that joke; if I had finished my sentence you would not have had it. There was one regiment in which only one private was able to get in to the ranks of the contingent. The others were all officers and non-commissioned officers. That sort of thing went on all over the country, and although they were only militia men, although they were only raw troops, I am proud to be able to say to-night, on the authority of Lord Roberts' despatches, that our men have been able to hold their own with the others. There is one more remark I wish to make. The people of Canada have been struck by the extraordinary way in which the Mother Country has entered into this war. The manner in which it has been done has thrilled our people with admiration. We have seen the best blood in England spilt in this campaign. What for? In order to uphold the rights of one or two hundred thousand of our fellow-colonists in one small part of the Empire. That has been a great object-lesson to us all. We have seen men of wealth, of birth, and position leave their comfortable homes by hundreds; we have seen them leave all the luxury and ease of the greatest and finest and highest civilisation that this world has ever seen, to undergo dangers, trials, wounds, and in many cases death, all for this cause. Now, this has been an object-lesson to us all in Canada. If your people will do that for one colony we feel you would be likely to do it for another. Whether you would or not I say it is a fine thing to have an Empire to fight for that can produce such men, and it is a proud thing for our contingents to be able to fight alongside such comrades. With reference still to this point about Imperial defence, I wish to say that we Canadians are very anxious about the establishment of all-British cables round the world, and we have tried to do our share in regard to the Pacific cable. We who are connected with the League in Canada have written and spoken and done everything we could to stir up public opinion, so that the Canadian people might have their share in that cable, and we have been alarmed lest anything should occur to affect adversely that project; and here let me say that I am glad to see present to-night my fellow-countrymen from Australia. I congratulate them on the possibility of the federation of their country, for we Canadians know by experience what a good thing it has been for us, and we believe that it will be equally good for them. But I wish to say to them, while here to-night, that while the establishment of the Pacific cable might have the effect of benefiting us in a pecuniary way by cheapening rates, that has not been the motive which has influenced people in our country. I for one may say that I never in my life sent a cable to Australia, I never received one, I never saw one, and I never met a friend who had, and on the committee of which I was one of the members I believe that that was pretty generally the experience. Allow me to say in explanation of this that I live in Toronto, well inland, where there is not any great communication with Australia, and therefore the question of cheap rates had nothing to do with our action. We wanted to see an all-British cable, so that if there should be a war the man in charge of the Navy should have the opportunity of handling that Navy to the best advantage. It is for that reason we Canadians want an all-British Pacific cable, and I am called upon to ask you here to use what influence you can, that, in any arrangements for new cables anywhere, there shall be a provision that the Empire may buy them at a fair price whenever it may wish, and I hope that the Empire, with the assistance of the Colonies, may some day unite and have their cables all over the world. Now, with reference to the Imperial forces, the Marquess of Salisbury did not say a great deal about the Imperial army. I think that I should like to say a word or two for them to-night. I think they have shown that in pluck and daring, and in the courage which has carried the British people through so much, they have been fully equal to the traditions of the past. With reference to the future I want to say one word. When this war is over I hope there will be an Imperial Conference called. I think the moment would be most opportune for leading men from the leading Colonies to meet together and see on how many points they could agree. I quite agree with the noble Marquess in saying that we must move slowly and along the lines of the least resistance; that we must move step by step, slowly and carefully, as we have been doing, and not be in too great a hurry for a written Constitution. That is the policy we have been advocating in our country, and it is the right one. I am afraid I have kept you too long. I am glad indeed to have been here to meet you to-night, and I am glad to see with us my friend, the Hon. J. I. Tarte, the first French Canadian who joined our League, now long years ago; and if there is anything more to be said on behalf of Canada I am sure that he will be willing to say it for me.

It will be noticed that when I said that there was one regiment in which there was only one private, the audience laughed loudly and interrupted me before I finished my sentence. I turned the laugh on them to the evident delight of the present Prince of Wales, who turned to me beaming with amusement when I sat down and said, "You nervous! you--why you could speak anywhere about anything." He was evidently pleased, for when my brother, Admiral John Denison, who commanded the _Niobe_, which escorted him as far as Gibraltar when he left for Australia, met him at Gibraltar, he spoke to him at once about my speech at that dinner.

Lord Wolseley, who was sitting on my left, Lord Avebury and Sir Edmund Barton being between us, tore off a piece of a menu card and wrote on it, "My dear friend, Bravo! Bravo! Wolseley," and passed it up to me. Everyone was very kind. The King came and spoke to me for a few minutes as he was going out, and said he was pleased with my speech. The Duke of Cambridge, Lord Salisbury, Lord Lansdowne, and many others spoke in friendly terms, and altogether I was well pleased that I had crossed the Atlantic to do that one piece of work for Canada and the Empire.

The accounts in the Press were very full of the idea of the importance and success of the function.

The _British Empire Review_ said:

It is unnecessary to dilate here upon the imposing features of the great assembly which congregated in the Grand Hall of the Hotel Cecil on 30th April. By common consent, as our principal contemporaries bear witness in the extracts from their leading columns, which are appended to the full report of the speeches at the banquet printed at the end of the present issue of the _Review_, no more memorable Imperial Demonstration has ever been held in London. Certainly the Executive Committee was justified in taking the exceptional course of inviting Colonel Denison to travel 3,500 miles in order to be present, and he in turn can have no reason to regret his acceptance of the invitation. Many of those present, from the highest downwards, have expressed the opinion that, taking into consideration the occasion of the banquet, the attendance of persons of note, the speeches, the general excellence of all the arrangements, and the dinner itself, the event stands unrivalled within living memory.

On the 17th May, 1900, a meeting of the Council of the League was held, principally to hear an address from me on behalf of the Canadian Branch. The late Earl of Derby, K.G., occupied the chair. I brought before the Council the resolution with which our Executive Committee had entrusted me when I was leaving:

Resolved, that the Executive Committee of the British Empire League in Canada wishes, in view of the President's coming visit to England, to reiterate its well-defined opinions upon certain matters of Imperial unity. It strongly feels the desirability of the Pacific cable project, the importance to the Empire of some mutual tariff preference between its various parts, the advisability of holding another Imperial Conference to discuss matters of defence, trade, and other interests of the Empire, and the vital necessity of encouraging the production of a sufficient national food supply under the British flag.

I pressed all these points upon the Council in a speech which is reported in the _British Empire Review_ for June, 1900.

I had been discussing these questions and particularly the food supply with many people and found an undercurrent of feeling much stronger in that direction than on my previous visits to England, and I felt sure that if any political leader would come out and boldly advocate our policy he would get a strong support. I knew Lord Salisbury was in full sympathy with my views, but the cold reception given to him in 1890 and 1892, when he tried to lead public opinion in that direction, had thoroughly discouraged him, and he refrained from further efforts, not because he did not feel the importance of the question, but he felt it was hopeless. He wrote me on 1st March, 1901:

I am old enough to remember the rise of Free Trade and the contempt with which the apprehensions of the protectionists of that day were received, but a generation must pass before the fallacies then proclaimed will be unlearnt. There are too many people whose minds were formed under their influence, and until those men have died out, no change of policy can be expected.

Mr. Chamberlain still held back, but I felt that he would come to our policy as soon as he could see any hope of a successful movement. I was anxious to test the public feeling, but did not see any opportunity, until I met Sir Howard Vincent about the middle of May, and he told me he was going down to Chelmsford, to deliver a lecture on "South Africa." The meeting was organised by Major Sir Carne Rasch, who was nursing the constituency, and intending to be a candidate in the Conservative interest at the general elections, which were to come off that autumn. Sir Howard Vincent said he would arrange that I should have half an hour to say something about Canada. I agreed to go, and decided that I would feel the pulse of the masses on the subject of food supply, but I said nothing of this to anyone, for I felt that neither Sir Howard nor Sir Carne Rasch would wish to run any risks. I began very cautiously but soon had the audience with me. I was continually cheered, and went on farther and farther, until I advocated a duty on corn, or a bounty on wheat, or a bonus to farmers to keep wheat in ricks. I had been astonished at the friendliness of the audience, but when I got to that point, Sir Carne Rasch and Sir Howard Vincent evidently became nervous, and Sir Howard whispered to me that we would have to get off in order to catch the train, and I stopped instantly. On driving to the station I saw that both my friends were uneasy, and I said, "I hope I did not make any bad breaks"; Sir Carne said, "Oh, I think not." I replied, "You can easily say that I am an ignorant colonial and did not know any better." He laughed at this, but I could see he was a little nervous as to the result.

About four or five days after this I was in the lobby of the House of Commons, when Sir Carne Rasch came out of the House, and as soon as he saw me he came across to me at once, and said he was glad to see me, and that he was going to get my address from Sir Howard Vincent. He went on to say that the people at Chelmsford had been delighted with my speech, that letters had been written to him, and he had been asked to get me to go down to Chelmsford and repeat my speech and enlarge upon it. He said he was astonished, that the people had been discussing it ever since, and he offered to secure the largest hall in Chelmsford if I would go down, and that he would guarantee it would not hold all that would wish to come. I was leaving in three or four days for home, and had no opportunity, and so had to decline.

A day or two afterwards, in the Mafeking demonstration, I was looking at the crowds near the Piccadilly Circus, when I heard a man say to another, "Is not that Colonel Denison?" I knew I had seen him before, and I said, "Yes, it is; do you come from Toronto?" "No," he replied, "I am from Chelmsford, and heard you speak there last week," and he introduced me to three friends from Chelmsford. One was the Mayor, another the editor of the _Essex County Chronicle_. They at once asked me if I was going down to Chelmsford again, and whether Major Rasch had seen me, and they urged me to go, telling me that the people were very anxious that I should speak there again, and that they were busily discussing the various points which I had raised.

I naturally watched for the return of the election in the following October, for I was very anxious that my friend Sir Carne Rasch should be elected. The return for Chelmsford was Major Rasch, 4,978, H. C. S. Henry, Lib., 1,849, a majority of 3,129. I felt then that my speech had not hurt him, or that if it had it did not matter. This incident had an important influence upon the subsequent work of our League in Canada for several years.