"The spectacle of peoples of single race and common traditions existing in a country with clearly defined geographical boundaries, and clinging with successful tenacity to their political existence over long spaces of time, is not an uncommon one in history; but that an Empire like our own, which has over-run the world, which embraces hundreds of races and scores of States, many of which are claiming, and rightly, to be counted as nations themselves—that such an Empire should voluntarily hold together when there is no force to compel it to do so, when the forces that are working in the direction of separation are so strong, when separation itself is so easy—will be an unparalleled and magnificent achievement. This, then, is the problem which the Victoria League has set itself to solve. You endeavour to do it, not by the agency of material forces, not by laws and regulations, because there is no authority behind you to compel anybody to carry out your behests, but by appealing to that which is the most sacred of all human instincts, namely the family tie, and by preaching the gospel that the real cement of Empire is brotherhood, and that the real basis of brotherhood is mutual understanding."