The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1926. GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 251, 22 October 1926, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1926. GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the torong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

After a day devoted to compliments and the British Prime Minister's outline of business, the Imperial Conference got down to work on Wednesday, when there was a discussion on foreign affairs. Over the proceedings, says one of our messages, '•there has fallen an official and impenetrable veil of secrecy," and it is added that '"the accounts published in most of the London morning papers indicate how closely tae compact not to reveal the intimate details of Sir Austen's speech has been observed." It has been said that a secret told to more than three people is no longer a secret, and possibly something of the discussion will leak out, but the British Government will not be embarrassed, as it was af the last conference, by the effects of an official summary on foreign communities. In such a case as this, strict secrecy is wise, and only the most fanatical upholder of open diplomacy would say it was not. Dominion Prime Ministers go to England to learn, among other things, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about foreign affairs. They learnt this before the war, and the knowledge they received must have had some result in preparation for that event. To treat them with anything less than complete candour would be to misuse a great opportunity. Naturally, if the hopes and fears and intentions of the Foreign Office are to be laid bare, secrecy is a condition. No Foreign Minister would talk freely on any other terms, and one of the main purposes of the conference would be frustrated. Moreover, it is possible that there is a freedom of expression at such round-table conferences that would iiardly be possible in dispatches, and there is the added advantage of questioning and exchange of views. In one of these conferences with the heads of the Foreign Office a Dominion leader might obtain more insight into foreign problems tnan might come to him from years of reading dispatches.

Though one does not know what Sir Austen Chamberlain said, one has a pretty good idea of the subjects he dealt with. He would explain the Locarno Pact, the entry of Germany into the League, and what might reasonably be expected from Germany in the future. Russia would bulk largely in his review of European politics, and no doubt the danger of Russian intrigue was very strongly emphasised. Possibly the nest most important European subject was

Italy, where the Fascist movement and Mussolini's megalomania are a danger to European peace as well as to democracy. It may be, however, that the country that received most attention in "Sir Austen's survey of affairs was China, which, for the moment—and it is unfortunately a long moment— probably is causing the Foreign Office more anxiety than .any other part of the world. The anarchy in China and the hostility towards foreigners make a grave problem the Powers, but more especially for Britain, since Britain has the largest stake in the country and is the main target of Bolshevik -fired hate.

All this intimate revelation of Foreign Office problems must have been exceedingly interesting to the Dominion Premiers, and especially to those who were attending for the first time. It may also have caused one or two of the delegates to doubt whether their ideas of virtual independence within the Empire are quite as feasible as they had thought. The Foreign Minister's statement is said to have thrown into "vivid relief the virtual impossibility cf sfiely accommodating the coid facts to the ideal of Dominion independence in the field of foreign affairs," and the representatives of the .Dominions that aspire to complete autonomy were unable to get over the difficulty contained in the dictum, "When the King is at war, the Empire is at war." There is no way out of that difficulty. A Dominion cannot be in the Empire one day and out of it the next. So long as it remains in the Empire it is exposed to the risks of membership.