'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland together with its Colonies and Dependencies' has no shorter or more inspiring name.

Throughout the Colonial Conference of 1907 statesmen and leader writers tried every expedient of periphrasis and allusion to avoid hurting any one's feelings even by using such a term as 'British Empire.' To the _Sydney Bulletin_, and to the caricaturists of Europe, the fact that any territory on the map of the world is coloured red still recalls nothing but the little greedy eyes, huge mouth, and gorilla hands of 'John Bull.' If, again, the young Boer or Hindoo or ex-American Canadian asks himself what is the meaning of membership ('citizenship,' as applied to five-sixths of the inhabitants of the Empire, would be misleading) of the Empire, he finds it extraordinarily difficult to give an answer.
When he goes deeper and asks for what purpose the Empire exists, he is apt to be told that the inhabitants of Great Britain conquered half the world in a fit of absence of mind and have not yet had time to think out an _ex post facto_ justification for so doing.

The only product of memory or reflection that can stir in him the emotion of patriotism is the statement that so far the tradition of the Empire has been to encourage and trust to political freedom.

But political freedom, even in its noblest form, is a negative quality, and the word is apt to bear different meanings in Bengal and Rhodesia and Australia.
States, however, constitute only one among many types of political entities.

As soon as any body of men have been grouped under a common political name, that name may acquire emotional associations as well as an intellectually analysable meaning.