" NOT INTRODUCED."

Evening Post, Volume LXXIII, Issue 26, 31 January 1907, Page 6

" NOT INTRODUCED."

A day or two ago, Lord Elgin, Secretary of State for the Colonies, attended a banquet in celebration of Australia's Anniversary Day. Replying to the toast of "The Imperial Government" he confessed — without the shadow of a blusjh, apparently— that the greatest difficulty in bringing about unity between the Governments of the colonies and the Motherland was "lack of acquaintance." Oh, the sad pity of it all! This is tho twentieth centurj. Captain Cook is long 6ince dead. The treaty of Waitangi— who among the living remembers the day that it wai. signed? Settlement has proceeded apace in these islands and in the continent of Australia. The kangaroo no longer hops in the streets of Sydney, if the marsupial ever hopped there. New Zealand is no longer a vagus region under the tutelage of the "Mother State," New South Wales, but as far as British statesmen seem .to be concerned we are still in the dark age 3, still in the days when the leading citizens had to carry their stores on the backs from the ship's side to tiieir homes. This cry oi "lack of acquaintance" between the Mother Country and her scions sounds like the plaint of a father who says, weakly, that ho does not know his sons. It was this inexcusable "lack of acquaintance" that lost the great United States from the mighty British Empire. There may have been some excuse for ignorance in those days of sailing vessels, but in these times of quick transit, in style de luxe, it is astounding to hear a Secretary of State for the Colonies ndmi£, &ra.cLi.coJly. tlm.* Greater 2?ritaiil has not been introduced to Great Britain. Already this absence of appreciation of colonial — Imperial — interests has provoked some oitterness in the Antipodes. The muddlo over the New Hebrides is still fresh in mind ; indeed, the shining lights of Downing-street will havo to burn more oil lest they fall into worse blunders. New Zealanders and Australians, statesmen and private citizens alike, take care to gain a knowledge of Great Britain at first hand. They go to London and the provinces, acquiring facts whichl they transmit to the people here. It is time that British statesmen returned the compliment. Imperial patriots hore may well hope that Lord Elgin's latest pronouncement foreshadows an improvement on tho old regime of "Kaj Mesiduai: I don't know," the words of the Indian chief in 'The Squaw Man."