A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 120, 14 February 1935, Page 7

A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

India’s Constitution In the debate on the Constitution of India, Mr. Winston ChurchiU admitted that he had loosely and unwisely used the phrase “Dominion status” immediately after the war. The speech in which Mr. Churchill used the phrase was delivered in 1921 at the time of the Imperial Conference when he held the otiice of Secretary' of State for the Dominions and Colonies. He said: “India is now coming into our affairs and councils as a partner, a powerful partner. We well know how tremendous was the contribution which India made in the war in 1914, how, when there was no other means of filling a portion of the front by men from any other part of the world, there came the two splendid Indian corps which were almost annihilated in the mud and the shell fire of that terrible winter in Flanders. . . . We owe India that deep debt, and we look forward confidently to the days when the Indian Government and people will assume fully and completely their Dominion status.” Then years later Mr. Churchill said he used the words “Dominion status” on that occasion in a ceremonial sense, and told the Joint Select Committee on India that, he was merely making “what politicians often have to do, an agreeable speech upon a festive occasion.” He went on to say, “no member of the Cabinet meant, contemplated. or wished to suggest the establishment of a Dominion Constitution for India in any period which human beings ought to take into account.” Pledges to India. Yet on March 15. 1921, the instrument. of instructions from the KiugEmperior to the GOvernor-General of India read: “For above all things it is our will and pleasure that the plans laid by our Parliament . . . may come to fruition to the end that British India may attain its due place among our Dominions.” On July 2, 1928, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald said: “I hope that within a period of months rather than years there .will be a new Dominion added to the commonwealth of our nations, a Dominion of another race, a Dominion that will find self-respect as an equal within this Commonwealth. I refer to India.” Lord Irwin, when he was Viceroy, on October 31, 1929, speaking with the full authority of the British Cabinet, declared “it was implicit in the declaration of 1917 that the natural issue of India’s constitutional progress as there contemplated is the attainment of Dominion status.” On November 7,1929, Mr. Stanley Baldwin said: “... surely no one dreams of a self-governing India with an inferior status.” The present Viceroy of India, Lord Willingdon. said on August 28, 1933: "This Government’s policy has been’. . . to push on,with the reforms as hard as they could go so as to help India forward to Dominion status and absolute equality with the other Dominions.” •Statute of Westminster. , The Attorney General, Sir Thomas Inskip, in the India Constitution debate in the House of Commons, said the Statute of Westminster did not mention, still less define Dominion status. The Statute of Westminster which came into effect on December 11, 193(1, gave formal and necessary ratification to certain of the declarations and resolutions of the Imperial Conferences of 1926 and 1930. The Conference of 1926 defined the Dominions as “autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or foreign affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. . . . Every self-governing x member of the Empire is master of its destiny. In fact, if ‘not always in form, it is subject to no more compulsion whatever.” The Conference further laid down that as a consequence of this equality of status which had developed “the GovernorGeneral is the representative of the Crown (his Majesty’s) not of the Government in Great Britain." The Imperial Conference of 1930 adopted a report of a committee which had be'en studying the methods of sweeping away al] possible limitation on Dominion freedom. The recommendations were embodied in the Statute of Westminster. Under it, Dominion Parliaments have full power to make laws having extra-territorial operation; no law made by a Dominion Parliament is void on the ground that it is repugnant to, or conflicts with, the law of England ; no law made by the English Parliament can be made to extend to a Dominion without that Dominion’s consent; any alteration in the succession to the Throne or in the royal style and titles must require the consent of all the Dominion Parliaments as well as of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Evangeline Booth. General Evangeline Booth, who was farewelled by 3000 Salvationists in London on the eve of her departure for Australia, was elected leader of the Salvation Army on September 2, 1934. She has a winsome charm which is a contrast to'the somewhat brusque manner of her father, William Booth, the founder of the movement, and the reserve of her brother, the late General Bramwell Booth. From early childhood she played at conducting services, nad when a schoolgirl, preached in the street, standing on a chair. She was made a captain of the Salvation Army before she was 20. Gifted with the natural eloquence of her mother, and with more fluency than any of her brothers or sisters. Eva Booth soon attracted large audiences. She rose to be Field Commissioner. Then she was sent to Canada, and when the rush for gold in the Klondyke began she organised missionaries and nurses and personally shared the hardships of those strange years. In 1905 she was appointed to the national leadership of the,Army in the United States of America as Commander and there for the next 29 years she laboured with energy and resourcefulness. In the War, Commander Booth organised alleviation for the sol. diets, and received the Distinguished Service Medal from the President of the U.S.A. Her personal tastes are simple. She loves music, she plays the piano and harp, and used to sing beautifully. She has composed many hymns. She is;a;strong swimmer and rides well. Cartel.

Efforts are being made to form a cartel to take over altogether about 25,000 tons of pepper which is either in London or due within a few days. Cartel means an industrial combine or trust. It is derived from the German use of the word Kartell, which was first applied to a combine of railway material manufacturers in 1579. The industrial cartel arose out of the need to control the stocking of the market in order to stabilise prices. From that it developed into an organisation which instituted a central selling office to dispose of the product for the benefit of all the members of the cartel.