Evening Post. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1924. CONFERENCE DECISIONS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 27, 1 February 1924, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1924. CONFERENCE DECISIONS

Some 'light is thrown on what I oiten appears to be the dual personality of General Smuts by the debate on Imperial preference which was reported from Capetown yesterday. \l n one aspect he is the broadest-minded of Imperial statesmen, with an international standing surpassed by but a few of the front-rank men in Britain. No J*unister from -the ■ Dominions ever caught the ear of the world. as .•General Smuts caught it with that great speech in October last in which, with a masterly combination of courtesy, candour, eloquence, and power, he issued what was at once an.appeal and a challenge to France as the chief disturber of the peace of Europe, and calledupon Britain to put her disapproval into action and, if necessary, to take her own course alone. Several of Mr. Lloyd George's war speeches and one or two that he,has made since may have had a greater effect, but how many even of Mr. Lloyd George's speeches would have made a great stir outside his own country without the official , position . which may entiow the utterance of a much feebler man with a representative importance? The Premiership. of South Africa did little more for General Smuts than provide him ,with the, opportunity. It was his personality, his record, his detachment, and his focussing, of the sentiment of Britain and the Empire in admirable language that did the rest.

But in addition to Smuts the Imperial and international statesman, the man who less than twen-ty-five years ago was helping his fellow-Boers to fight against the British Empire but in the Great War led them-against its enemies, the enthusiastic champion of the League oLNations, there is Smuts the politician, Smuts the party leader, Smuts who, as the, antagonist of Hertzog and the Republicans, has to trump their trick when possible and show himself as good a local patriot as they. It was surely Smuts the politician that got the upper hand when he endeavoured; to get the Dominions to boycott the Washington Conference unless they were giyen separate representation. And it is clearly the politician and not the statesman or the lawyer that is continually insisting that the independence which General Hertzog and his followers are claiming has already ..been-conceded by. the admission of the Dominions to the Le.ague of Nations. The politician seemed again to have triumphed when General Smuts, after his return from the Imperial Conference, argued that . the Imperial Government's "promises" in regard to fiscal preference were binding, and that grave consequences might follow if they were not honoured by the new Parliament. Mr. Cresswell, the Labour Leader in the South African Parliament,' did well to attack this utterance, and he has succeeded in drawing from General Smuts an explanation that was certainly needed.

Mr. Cresswell's motion was to the effect "that promises made by a Government at an Imperial Conference impose no obligations ou the country or Dominion concerned until they are ratified by its Parliament, and dissents from the contrary view put forward by the Prime Minister in a public speech at Johannesburg on 14th December last."' Mr. Cresswell complained that the passage in this speech dealing with Imperial preference /'challenged what was always considered an unquestionable position," and he asked General Smuts to admit his error. It was not to be expected that General Smuts would accept this kind invitation from an Opposition leader. He did not admit that he had'made a mistake at Johannesburg, but his explanation proved that he would have been wiser to express himself differently. In his Johannesburg speech General Smuts had, he said, 'taken the constitutional position for granted, and merely, stated his views regarding what he considered would be a great disaster in the event of the Conference's work being lost." The constitutional position w.hich General ..Smuts „ thus takes for granted was exactly that affirmed by Mr. Cresswell's motion and previously approved by the Conference itself on General Smuts's own instance. It is therefore clear that he cannot have overlooked it when he made his speech, but; he would have avoided much misunderstanding both in his own country and outside if he had expiessly affirmed what he took for granted. •

The .perpetual misrepresentation to which Britain and the friends of the British connection are subject in South Africa should have made General Smuts all the more careful to provide no material for misunderstanding and to insist that Britain is just as free as South Africa to do exactly what she likes with her own tariff and the recommendations of the Imperial Conference. To say so much in Britain's favour might not have served the purposes of the Johannesburg speech as well as- the unqualified warning of "a. great disaster" in t;h«y went of n decision adverse to fcM-?][^! jL^fip.piabasi -but

Smuts the statesman should hot have missed the point. There is, however, no ground for the suggestion that he had any desire to prejudice the case against Britain. If he did not make it clear that she was free to choose without providing anybody with a legitimate grievance, he did not insist that ncr hands were tied by the doctrine of the continuity of Imperial policy or any other consideration. As to the treatment of Mr. Cresswell's motion, we cannot see that either party is to be congratulated. The first part of it, on which everybody was agreed, was rejected because the Government objected to the second part, which attacked the Johannesburg speech. An amendment eliminating the second part would have helped to put Britain right by a resolution which nobody could oppose.