DOMINIONS OFFICE NOT OBSOLETE

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 272, 13 August 1938, Page 11

DOMINIONS OFFICE NOT OBSOLETE

Reply To Australian

Minister

CO-ORDINATION OF ALL COMMUNICATIONS

By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. LONDON, August 11.

Officials of the Dominions Office, replying to the criticism by the Australian Minister of External Affairs, Mr. W. M. Huglies, that the Dominions Office was obsolete, point out that the office co-ordinates every form of communication with the Dominions on foreign policy, trade, migration, defence, and on other subjects which are not the province of the Foreign Office. When Mr. Hughes was last in England, it is stated, the Dominions Office did not exist _ Since its inauguration in 1925 its work had doubled and it was still increasing, as all the Dominions were fully informed of the latest developments in foreign countries and of British reactions, which officials of the Foreign Office provide and forward to the Dominions Office. While admitting that, often several hours of delay occur in decoding and deciphering, officials point out that the transfer of their functions to the Foreign Office would not change this. It would still be necessary to have a channel of co-operation with other departments such as at. present provided by the Dominions Office. .Agents-Gen-erals’ complaints were being inquired into.

In the course of his criticism, Mr. Hughes said that messages about international affairs should go direct from the Foreign Office or the Prime Minister of Britain to the Prime Ministers of the Dominions. “At present,” he said, ‘ a delay of a few hours in a message could make the consultation of a Dominion a.mere formal courtesy. The Dominions Office now acts as a net in which messages are entangled. It has no positive task.” Mr. Hughes added that it surely was an anachronism that information received by Dominion Governments lagged hopelessly behind a Press cable message which conveyed the same news to all the world.