BRITISH COLONIAL POLICY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 57, 8 March 1923, Page 7

BRITISH COLONIAL POLICY.

PROF. EGERTON'S NEW BOOK. LIMITS OF DOMINION STATUS. iFrnm Our Sptvlal Correspondent.> IjOMJON, January 21. The body of literature devoted to the study of the relations between Groat Bri- i tain and the. Dominions is being steadily ! increased and a new text has been issued I by Methuen "British Colonial Policy in ! the Twentieth Century," by H. K. Eger- I ton, Beit Professor of History at Oxford. \ This in a sense is complementary to two we have reviewed in our columns, in ; that they are the work of an Englishman, while the others "The Tangle of Empire," by Captain Mousley, a New Zealander. and "The British Commonwealth of Nations," by Jlr. Duncan Hall, an Australian, envisage the problem from i the standpoint of the Dominions. Professor Egorton has long made hie mark in this field of research, for in 1897 he published a "Short History of British Colonial l'olicv," which has remained a standard work, and is now in its sixth edition. In this new text, covering the developments of the present century Professor Kfjerton lias adopted the system of letting the makers of colonial policy speak for themselves. He quotes, and perhaps quotes too largely, from speeches of the statesmen of the Dominions. The method! of free quotation is justifiable for a book intended for the student of history, but to our mind Professor Egerton would have done hetter to have exercised his^selective judgment. By so doing he would have produced a book, the value of which to-day is hardly calculable, in that it would have been more easily read by the general public. For tlie immediate well-being of the British Commonwealth of Nations there is scarcely any subject on which public interest should be more actively engaged, and our only regret ie that Professor Egerton has not thought more of the interests of the general reader. The book is a thoroughly sound one, and authoritative in its very lavishness of docμmentation. The method the author adopts is, of course, that right and proper to history. Captain Mousley's text on "The Tangle of Empire" was of this type. a. small but masterly col- ■ lection of relevant speeches, dealing with one specific aspect of Dominion status. Professor Egerton's text of the like kind is on a large scale, too full of details j for any but the leisurely student to take in at one reading. 1 The gospel of Professor Egerton may I perhaps be best expressed in his own j words: "If the knowledge of colonial history amongst the educated classes of Great Britain ie still small, compared with their knowledge of European history, there has none the less been a great improvement in the last twenty years. Upon the whole, the stars in their courses seem fighting on the side of a sane Imperialism. 'Still, there is, perhaps, room for warning. The road to greatness can never be easy; and it is by sacrifice that such greatness is attained. AYe have before us the lesson of the war. How different might be the present state of England had an appeal been made/ to the higher side of the workers; .the employers making manifest that they also were prepared to forego private gain. Instead, the workers were encouraged to extort the utmost that could be extracted from the needs of their country, whilst profiteering went on naked and unashamed. Not by such means can the new Britain, or the new Greater Britain we have areamed of, be won or preserved; only by the old-fashioned virtues |6f selfsacrifice, regard for others, and merging one's own petty interests in the making of a greater whole, can the blessing j be fulfilled for which Jacob wrestled till the breaking of the day." And in this history of British Colonial policy the author has . justified the faith that is in him. He does show that while the Dominions were no doubt, influenced on occasion by material and narrower ends on behalf of their own particular Dominion, they did on the whole, try to do what they could for the interests of the British Commonwealth at large. There is one dominating topic included in this book on which we bound to examine the author's views with keen interest. "The Dominion status, as it is evolving itself/ he de- ' claree, "may be described as one of absolute independence, tempered by loyalty i to a common Grown, and by the deter- ! mination to work in co-operation with Great Britain in the fulfilment of the Imperial trust." On the specific issue the position of the Dominions when it is a question of war, he quotes at some length Mr. Downie Stewart's speech in the New Zealand Parliament: "When it comes to carrying out the terms of this Treaty . . . j . we want to know what our position is with foreign powers. Jf they say to us: 'We treat you as a sovereign State. You made peace, on your own initiative and by your own act, and we look to you in the future whenever a question of external affairs arises to act as an independent power, making peace or war on your own initiative,' one can see at once that it gives rise to an immense change in the British Constitution; and may give rise to the greatest conflict between the different component parts of the Empire." The issue has been brought into sharp relief by the recent experience of the Dominions in regard to the Kemal incident. An English provincial paper, the "Western Mail," Cardiff, is moved this week to point out that some of the Dominion Governments knew of the crisis for the first time when they saw the appeal from Downing Street'in the public Press, and this important paper calls on Mr. Bonar Law to make an announcement stating that he will take measures to prevent a repetition of this ■mistake. j Quoting Mr. Masscy"s reply to Mr. ! Stewart—"To-day we are united, the Dominions of the Empire, the United Kingdom, and dependencies under one crown, one flag, and one constitution; and I hope that .natural alliance will last for all time" — Professor Egerton characterises the New Zealand Prime Ministers statement as more satisfactory from a sentinjental than from an argumentative point of view, and declares that the New Zealand Prime Minister altogether avoided the legal argument. And one asks whether the "Western Mail" is not justified in winding up its appeal for action in these words: "Such a pronouncement (from the British P.M.) would at once allay the natural anxieties of the Dominions Governments, and relieve them of the fear that their constituents might at any moment be swept off their feet by sudden and ill-considered appeals to sentiment in matters of which they themselves mtiy be entirely ignorant." To return to the book. Professor Egerton [stresses the importance of noting that" neither statesmen nor public opinion seem to know tlw direction in which they are moving, and points out

the curious anomaly that nations who would almost certainly rush to hex aid were the Empire of Oreat Britain in danger, were yet unwilling to give such an undertaking in black and white, whereas they had gaily put their seal to promises which in sober fact they would he almost certain to refuse to fulfil. Our present policy which is as yet one of mere drift or confused and individual action is discussed at length and the many difficulties which beset it are set out. The author says: "If each member of the partnership is to have a distint-t J diplomatic representation and to speak I with a distinct voice. and. if the I Dominions are too suspicious or too in- | different to thresh out a common policy, i along with flreat Britain, will it be pos- | sible for the British Empire to cen- | tiniie'. . The author quotes very cogently Lord Milner's view: •'[ do not believe that on any great world question different views • will be taken by tho different parts of ! the Empire, so long as they remain in j intimate toucli with one another, and i are able to consult steadily, before any crisis arises. What I dread is. the possibility of a clash because action has been *aken by one member of the family— it naturally would be by the United Kingdom— or because some course has been pursued in foreign policy by our own Foreign Office . . . which brings us up to a certain difficulty, a critical position when we should not find ourselves supported by other members of the family, simply because they did not. know enough of the previous cireumH stances which had put us in the position when that decision had to be taken. Therefore what seems of vital importance is to keep up continuous knowledge." The Kemal incident raises the question to our mind as to how effective this "continuous knowledge." is a reality. There seems no reason t,o doubt that the Foreign Office does implement its agreement made at the last Imperial Conference to circulate information regularly among the Dominion Governments, and that they were or might have been, had they chosen, so informed. It would be impossible to overrate the value of this text of collated speeches. Every day its lesson is pressed home that we need more and considered action urgently This very week, Canada cables that a motion is to be submitted to the House demanding that the participation of that Dominion in war must be placed before Parliament for decision. What of the other Dominions?