How the World Views the Situation of the British Empire
How the world views the situation of the British Empire is expressed by the New York Tribune, December 15. It says that all “must be” changed in South Africa “before long,” “unless the world is to see the greatest political cataclysm of modern ages.” It also says:— It is true that, as the London papers are saying, not merely South Africa, but the world-wide British Empire, is at stake. Perhaps that fact was not realized as clearly before the war as it is now. At the present time it is seen by all as clearly as the noonday sun. If Great Britain were defeated by the Boers, she would be driven out of South Africa altogether. And what then?—Why, she would be a third-rate power. India would be lost in a twinkling. The United States of Australia and the Dominion of Canada would probably reckon further connection with her a source of weakness and peril, rather than of safety and strength. And the greatest and most beneficent empire the world has ever seen would become a thing of the past. That is the tremendous realization that now dawns upon the British mind. And the London Times, the most nearly official of any paper in England, says:— Neither the Crimean War nor the Indian mutiny gave rise to greater dangers to the empire than that with which we are now menaced, nor at either of those critical periods was Great Britain so isolated politically or regarded with such dislike and suspicion as are now almost everywhere apparent. Unless the calmness which impresses the foreign observer proceeds only from apathy or a want of sufficient imagination to realize the imminent danger to the whole fabric of our empire, the great efforts now urgently required will surely be made before it is too late to retrieve the situation. We are fighting not merely for supremacy in South Africa, but for our position as a great power. It is possible that the world may not be compelled to witness this awful cataclysm just yet; though the fact that the British press and publicists should so openly confess and discuss this as the only alternative shows that the danger is real. And it all shows, in a most impressive way, by how small and thin a thread even the mightiest of earthly dominions hangs. We know from the whole field of the prophecies of the word of God, that we are in the time when all earthly dominions shall go to pieces and be utterly wasted; and the people of God must be prepared for any such thing, in any case, at any time. The Christians of the Roman Empire in the fifth century saw the like in the ruin of that empire, the “mightiest monument of greatness built by human hands,” and it was an awful thing to contemplate. Yet the Christians of these last times can only expect to see a more awful ruin than was even that at Rome. There is now perplexity of nations; and it is exceedingly doubtful whether there will ever be any less. And soon the sign of the Son of Man will appear. “Get ready, get ready, get ready.”