PERSONAL TOUCH

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 120, 25 May 1925, Page 5

PERSONAL TOUCH

NECESSITY FOE IMPERIAL

PROSPERITY.

LONDON, 23rd May.

At the Colonial Institute dinner, "Mr. Amery, Secretary of State for the Colonies, said the Dominions did not occupy the positions of ordinary nations. Like other nations they enjoyed control of th^ir affairs, and in addition they had all the opportunities and privileges of belonging to a world-wide Empire. Britain herself did not occupy any higher status, though she at present had heavier responsibilities and duties. He could imagine no nation, not even tho-United States, whose opportunities of development would not be enormously increased, and whose national lives would not be enormously enriched, if it were possible for them to be admitted into the circle of the British Commonwealth. The most important task of the next fewyears for Empire statesmen, even at tha cost of personal trouble, was to get into personal touch with one another.

Mr. Amery added that a danger to unity lay in possible misunderstanding and shortsightedness. His experience at the Colonial Office convinced him that no constitution would, keep an Empire together which depended on dispatches and telegrams. Statesmen must get into personal touch and discuss the common problems in a spirit of friendliness.

Lord Jellicoe said the Empire's greatest problem was the redistribution of population. The subject was commonly discussed as ■ though it concerned men only, but it was equally important that some of Britain's two millions surplus women should go out to the Dominions and counteract the excess of males.