ENGLAND’S PLACE IN EMPIRE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 203, 25 May 1944, Page 4

ENGLAND’S PLACE IN EMPIRE

Mother To Dominions (England’s place in the British Empire ■ was the subject of an address given by Mr. ®. (P. Hay to a meeting ,of the Royal Society of St. George in Wellington last night. i It was now upward of a century since the territorial expansion of the Empire reached its peak, and the history of the intervening period, was one of development along lines for which there was no precedent, he said. The period had witnessed the evolution of the major British communities throughout the Empire from the status of colonies to that of selfgoverning Dominions, and latterly to that of autonomous States, united (together with Great Britain) by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members • of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Despite its apparently loose structure, the Commonwealth had great strength and elasticity. Those qualities arose from the fact that the Commonwealth partook of the nature of a family system of freely associated States, equal in status though not in stature, and grouped round “the famous island” of Britain, the Mother Country of the family. “England,” said Mr. Hay, "is the mother to whom the Empire owes not only its birth, but its heritage of freedom and free institutions. She is the wise mother who has not only instilled those principles in the minds of her children, but unselfishly encouraged them to develop those principles even at the risk or complete independence on their partWith rare parental restraint, patience and wisdom, she has encouraged their growth along the path of self-reliance and responsibility, and has not thought it unbecoming to her power and dignity to meet them more than half-way in their aspirations toward equality o£ , with herself. There has thus been brought about the most remarkable and successful experiment in co-operation between free democracies which has ever e J ls£ ? c JMr. Churchill had said: Some foreigners mock at the British Empire because there are no parchment bonds.orhar steel shackles which compel action. But there are other forces, fat more compulsive, to which the fabric spontaneously responds., These deep tides are flawing now. . . . “It is those intangible realities, so, fully expressed in the present crisis, which afford the fullest location of the Mother Country s traditional attitude toward her children,” said Mr. Hay. She is still the source of inspiration ta them. •Though old in years, she shows herself capable of renewing,her youthful rigour when the freedom of the world is at stake, and in her great battle for existence, in 1040 her children were proud to stand behind her at what was at i( Once her darkest and her greatest hour.