EXTERNAL AFFAIRS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 70, 24 March 1926, Page 11

EXTERNAL AFFAIRS.

DEPARTMENTAL WORK.

ITS VALUE IN IRELAND. | DISCUSSION OF DOMINION STATUS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) j LONDON", February 0. I On the very day that Reuter was ! cabling from ' Sydney a declaration by j Mr. Lan<r, the New South Wales Prime ; Minister, that his Government did not j recognise the riyrht of the Dominion's j Department (in London) or any other institution to interfere with the domes- J tic affairs of a self-governing State, we ; had the Dail in Dublin discuss- j ing the position of the Irish Free State I in case of war, and its Minister for Ex- j ternal Affairs, Mr. Fitzgerald, stated, in defending his Department, that while it might be urged by Article 9 of the Locarno Treaty that the Dominions could remain neutral though Britain went to war, he went on to state firmly that in the event of a great European "tonflict, "brute fact" and not paper guarantees would rule. It is a fact that the Free State, the newest Dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations, alone has a separate Minister for External Affairs, one which Mr. Fitzgerald defends as not a. luxury, biit one that gives a greater return than a similar Department in any other country. TTe must find room to record the fact, too, that Professor Magennis, whose action in regard to the boundary between Northern Ireland and the Free State so recently disturbed Irish, aft'airs, gave his voice for a Department of External Affairs and declared that it would be a fatal blunder to abolish it. "It was significant," he said, "that the quarters from which demands for the extinction of the Department proceeded were precisely the quarters from which protests emanated against the Irish language and every effort to make the Irish people Iri3h. It appeared that the Department had been doing good by stealth. "By one of the articles of the treaty •we could be made quasi-belligerents, if not full belligerents, in England's wars. Would anyone doubt that a great Power at war with England, knowing that naval bases and facilities must be provided in the Saorstat, would refrain from attack? "The importance of the Saorstat membership of the League of Nations lay in the it gave that they ■were not committed to endorsement of foreign policy initiated or adopted by Great Britain. The Department of External Affairs was i capable of better organisation and of a j greater career of national usefulness." In spite of the Trish Free State's a]*parent great self-dependence in setting up the Department which the otlu-r Dominions have not yet seen fit to organise, It is a curious fact that the Free State, for geographical and economic reasons, is in closer dependence on the Old Country than the other Dominions. This fact has found expression in Articles G and 7 of the Anglo-Irish Treat 3% which give Great Britain certain rights in peace and ■war to enable her to provide for the defence by sea of Great Britain and Ireland. The presence of these articles in | the treaty puts Ireland in a position j quite different from that of the Dominions. It is not enough for her that the Dominions should assert the right to declare neutrality, for if England, under the treaty, establishes naval 'bases in Ireland's ports, no belligerent Power is likely to respect her neutrality, how-1 ever much she declares it. j The discussion in the Dail is therefore ! not of merely local Irish interest. It has, however, revealed certain rcassur- I ing facts that the extreme Separatists' Party has-no longer the power it "formerly held, and the position to-day is in many ways greatly improved. Especi-' ally is it true that the atmosphere of ■ the Free State, unlike that of Ireland' ; under the Union, is wholesome enough ! to permit of the growth of fellow-feeling I ■n-ith the other members of the British Commonwealth. The wider question of the condition o: , the Empire is once more being actively | discused through the publication of two I books, one by Mr. F. 0. S. Sc-hillef , of ' Oxford, and the other by Mr. Richard, Jebb. Both these students of the Em- ' pire are rather gloomy in their views of the present position. Mr. Schiller, indeed, calls the British Empire "the most ramshackle Empire on- earth, vice Austria exploded, and declares that under its present informal, fluid, and | uncertain association it cannot endure. Mr. Schiller is too gloomy. The Empire has always been ramshackle, in the sense that it has never been the sym-! metrical organic Empire, the Bound' Table adumbrated a dozen years ago. ' Its very informality and loose structure have been its strength. I Mr. Jebb has but one piece of advice ' for Empire ills, and that is a British ' Zollverein, a Customs Union of the j whole Empire. Mr. Jebb would also have us cut free from European entanglements and the League of Nations. In this Mr. Jebb breaks away from Mr. Schiller, and the later thinks that we ought now to look towards creating a United States of Europe within the League of Nations.