DOMINION DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 226, 24 September 1927, Page 11

DOMINION DAY.

NEGLECTED BIRTHDAY. A COMPLICATED EMPIRE. QUEER COLLECTION OF NAMES. Twenty years ago on Monday, New Zealand emerged from the colonial stage and joined the ranks of the Dominions. After the first anniversary or two people took the honour very casually, and for many years now there has been little to mark September 26 from the ordinary working day. The banks and some of the other financial institutions cioseup, and some of the Government Departments also take a day off, and fly the New Zealand Ensign, but the ordinary shopkeeper continues the even tenor of his way. Although all Britain's colonial possessions—for no matter what high-sounding name we may choose the off-shoots of the Motherland are still colonies —are embraced in the term overseas Dominions, they style themselves differently according to their idea of the fitness of things. There are two Dominions—Canada and New Zealand—there is the Commonwealth of Australia and there is the Union of South Africa, and a multiplicity of colonies and other possessions. There is nothing people are eo touchy about as ' their own names, and so it is with countries. Most of us simply talk about the Empire and overseas Dominions, but the officials cannot lump things in that free and easy manner. Few of us realise what a complicated piece of machinery the Empire really is. First of all comes Great Britain and Northern Ireland— split up into the Kingdom of England, the Principality of Wales and the Kingdom of Scotland. Most people forget that Scotland is still a kingdom—in name. Northern Ireland is included with Great Britain. Then in order comes the Irish Free State, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The Isle of Man has its won legislature (the House of Keys) and the Channel Islands are governed by a Lieutenant-Governor for the Duke of Normandy—who happen also to be the King. It is to the Channel Islands that some British folks flee to escape taxation, as those islands, though so near the heart of the Empire, are practically exempt from Imperial taxation, but that is only one of the many anomalies that exist in this strange congeries of peoples forming the British Empire. Next in the list comes the Indian Empire, the Dominion of Canada, Newfoundland (which maintains her status independent of Canada), the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, the Union of South Africa and then follows a long list of Imperial Crown Colonies and Protectorates— which comprise quite a lot of the map painted red, from the speck of St. Helena to territories like the Sudan, Nyassaland, with their millions. As a writer said: "There is no fundamental law upon which the Constitution of the British Empire exists," but somehow the 13,909,782 square miles all round the globe, and the 450,094,000 people who live under the Union Jack seem to hang together pretty well.