Ashley Sterne Empire Day Thoughts

Ashley Sterne’s article, “Empire Day Thoughts,” was reprinted in The Week, Victoria, B.C., June 14, 1913.  The original publication was in London Opinion.  My grasp of history is unfortunately too meager to understand most of Sterne’s Imperial jokes and allusions. 

There is the sad irony that the British Empire Sterne celebrates here would be dismantled in the decades following The Great War.  Empire Day, celebrated on Saturday May 24th in 1913, was subsequently demoted to Commonwealth Day in 1958, and is now celebrated (tepidly) on the second Monday in March.



This Saturday is Empire Day, the day when some of England’s youth may attempt to paint the town red in celebration of the even more noteworthy endeavours of our Empire-builders to dye the map a similar hue.

On this day, in many a hostel throughout the length and breadth of our dear Motherland, glasses will be raised — filled with the product of the still more expensive Vaterland — to “the glory of our blood and state”, to the deeds that have made England what she is today; to the projects that shall make her what she will be tomorrow.  Then will our youth be led gently home — in severe cases frog-marched — to wake some hours later to the conviction that to think imperially is a waste of time, while there is still so much good work to be done on the football field at home.

We are not taught to think imperially at a sufficiently early age.  We are expected to take an interest in Imperial affairs at times when we have all our work cut out to get our work out.  It is impossible for a man to give his mind to such a question as, for example, Colonial Preference, when his whole mental equipment is called upon to decide whether violet socks clash or harmonize with green Harris tweeds.

But if from the earliest days we are taught more about modern history and less about ancient, such questions would cause us scarcely any difficulty.  As it is, however, we know a vast deal about King Canute’s throwing burnt cakes into the sea; King John’s lamentable oversight in sending Magna Charta to the Wash; the extraordinary colour scheme in transporting the Black Prince to the Crusades in a white ship; Henry VIII’s offer of poison or dagger to Katharine the Paragon; and other landmarks that serve to indicate the progress of the British Constitution from an Absolute Monarchy to a test for sobriety.

But what, I ask, does the average man know of our more modern history?  I’ll willingly stake your last half-crown that if I were to stop the first man I met in the street and ask him to tell me the cause of the Chartist Riots, he would unhesitatingly reply, “Lloyd George.”  We take it for granted that so long as we can give within two places of decimals the dates of England’s stop-press news, we are at liberty to let the rest of the fruit go bad.

What we require is a broadening of the mind, even though it should necessitate a consequent readjustment in the latitude of our hats.  And this can only be brought about by a thorough spring-cleaning of our old systems.

With this end in view I have devised a short primer which covers the principal events in the story of our Empire, commencing with the capture of Ireland from the Nationalist, and culminating in the publication of the Half-Seas-Over Edition of the Daily Mail.  It shows how Columbus fitted out regardless of expense, and told to discover Canada under pain of having his licence endorsed.  I go on to tell the story of how Mr. Keir Hardie found India as she really isn’t.  For the first time in any history book I relate how G. L. Jessop, having thoroughly demoralized the dream of British trundlers, set out for fresh worlds to conquer, and hit on Australia.  I show how refugees flying from the burdens of a super-tax, ran slap into South Africa, and enriched the Union Jack with a large hunk of unused territory and Solly Joel.  I give the details of how Burgess, sauntering casually on his back down the Straits of Magellan, bumped his head against the pier on Desolation Island, found a Scotsman there, and ultimately decided that annexation — from a business point of view — was not worth while.  The narrative, too, is set forth of how the British occupation of Egypt ultimately came about through the untiring efforts of Messrs. Salmon & Gluckstein to produce a reliable cigarette at a popular price.  These, and many other absorbing accounts, equally true, are given in the picturesque and vivid style that is so peculiarly my own; and the illustrations are in the best possible taste.

If my work succeeds in its object of teaching men to think imperially from the time their early doors open, I shall feel that the time spent upon its production has not been uselessly filched from Greenwich Observatory.  Or if it so influences Mr. Someone of Surbiton, or Mr. Nobody of Norbury as to cause him to take but a passing interest in Imperial affairs, I feel that I shall not do down to posterity unhonoured, though it is possible I may go unhung. — London Opinion