"To maintain a string of tropical dependencies, scattered along the
vital trade routes, the primary need was admittedly for the warships
which were missing after 1905, but the secondary need was for the men
who would give their working lives to the dependencies themselves. The
need was then for soldiers, administrators, engineers, physicians and
planters. These had been forthcoming in quantity since 1600 but it was
essential to the system that those who survived should come back to
Britain on retirement. In no other way could the next generation be
endowed with the same energy and continuity of outlook.
"So the British exile was a man who looked forward all his life to a
certain kind of reward. Fiercely devoted as he might be, and usually
was, to the land in which his active career was spent, his final goal
was a home in Britain. As those who survived to reach home were about
10 per cent of those who went abroad the earlier adventurers expected
a proportionate reward. The penniless younger brother might end as
landowner, churchwarden and justice of the peace. As generations
passed, the risks diminished and the expectations of the returning
exile were proportionately less. But the minimum expectation to the
end was a villa at Torquay and the majority dreamed rather of a
country place with some rough shooting and a stream in which to
fish.
"The incidence of taxation in the present century combined with other
social changes to make this dream unattainable. To maintain a county
family was difficult, to found one almost impossible. The returned
builder of empire was more likely to end in a London suburb, talking
to his bored neighbors about the past glories of Colombo or
Rangoon. This was no advertisement for the Empire and it would decide
his friends against letting their boys go, as they had planned, to
Trinidad or Fiji.
"The Welfare State reacted on the Empire in another way, for the
money taken from the returned exile was to make Britain more
comfortable for those who might otherwise have gone abroad. While
there were diminished prospects for those who went, there were
diminished hardships for those who stayed behind. To gain
independent means and to pay for the children's education was no
longer necessary and might not even be possible. As a breed, the
builders of empire have become extinct. Success in the modern age
is to be measured by one's ability to give the minimum of effort to
one's career and extract the maximum of subsidy from the state. To
these ends a new generation was to devote itself, leaving the
British Empire to collapse more suddenly and more completely than
any undefeated empire of the past; an example to the world of what
excessive taxation can bring about and in how short a time."