PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE!

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 183, 4 August 1919, Page 5

PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE!

GREAT STRIDES MADE. SETBACK NOW LIKEIiT. LEAGUE AND THE EMPIRE. (Bj Cable.—Press Association.—Copyright.) (Received 11.35 a.m.) LONDON, August 3. Lord Milner, Secretary of State for the Colonies, in the Sheldon Theatre, i Oxford, delivered hie inaugural address on problems of the Empire at a summer meeting of eight hundred 6tudeiits, including Australian and New Zealand soldiere. Lord Milner said that though the war was a source of great encouragement to Imperialists at home, a setback to Imperial politics must be expected for a time. Immense strides had recently been made in organising cooperation amongst the self-governing States of the Commonwealth, but these great institutes were now in abeyance. The Dominion's statesmen, whose participation in the war was invaluable, had gone back to become immersed in local affairs, and, like British leaders, were not troubling about instruments ot future Imperial co-operation. Overburdened Ministers, distracted legislatures, and the hectic Press were not ready to apply the fundamental brain work necessary to the solution of the Imperial problem. •liome fear \va* expressed that the League of Nations would tend towards disruption of the Dominions and the Mother Country. Lord Milner said he did not share the feai - j but it would be ian irreparable disaster if, in stretching out for "pax mundi." we let slip "pax Britannica,' , which was a long-assured and well-tested possession. By doing this we would be sacrificing the substance for the shadow. The people of the Dominions must j learn more regarding their obligations as members of the world - encircling society of rtatiohs. The United Kingdom alone carried the burden of the vast dependent Empire. In the future development of the Commonwealth there was bound to be closer connection than at present between the self-governing and dependent Empire.—'("Times.")