Evening Post. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1926. THE EQUALITY FORMULA

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 130, 29 November 1926, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1926. THE EQUALITY FORMULA

A hundred and fifty years ago the leaders of the American Revolution propounded as a political axiom that "all men are created equal." Encouraged by their example, the Constituent Assembly of France carried the matter a good deal further a few years later by declaring that "all men are born and remain free and equal in their rights." Abstract and sweeping propounding of this kind, affirming principles which to Jefferson and his colleagues appeared to be "self-evident" and to the French Assembly "simple and incontestable," are so alien to the prosaic methods of British statesmanship that we are accustomed to regard them as better suited to mathematics than to politics. But a week ago we were led to believe that the statesmen assembled at the Imperial Conference bad made another indisputable and epoch-making discovery of the same class and had propounded it in a way that would check every centrifugal tendency and "envisaged a closer unity and greater inherent strength." Every Dominion, says the Conference, is now a self-governing member of the Empire and master of its destiny. . . . Equality in status as far as Britain an_d tho Dominions arc concerned is thus the root principle governing our Imperial relations. Fortunately for the American Republic it had a more solid foundation than the self-evident absurdity about the equality.of man, and fortunately for the British Empire its salvation is also independent of the fallacious formula about the equality of its States which has been so enthusiastically welcomed as a panacea. . The immediate success of the formula is strikingly illustrated by the fact that, while we described the Report' as ■ the "Magna Carta" of emancipation for Dominions which were already free, the term has been applied to it quite seriously by other authorities. To Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, says the "New York World," this is a charter of nationhood. New Zealand is under no delusions on the point, but she may stand alone, and even in Australia Mr. Bruce's elation suggests that the "Montreal Star's" description of the document as a "Magna Carta for the Dominions" may not be unwelcome. It is, however, quite possible that, while expressing this opinion as that of the Dominions, the standpoint of the "Montreal Star," which has strongly condemned the aloofness and the shillyshallying of Mr. Mackenzie King in regard to Locarno, may not really be very different from our own, for its comment proceeds as follows: — It is very adroit aud contains little that is important and now, yet is so phrased that General Hertzog will _c able to get up before his Afrikanders on the veldt and use phrases which will seem to show that lis successfully championed their most determined demands. That the Report contains "phrases which will seem to show" that General Hertzog has scored heavily though nothing substantial has really been conceded confirms our own description of it as a triumph of draftsmanship rather than statesmanship. But even to have given General Hertzog something with which to save his own face and placate the Die-hard Boers is no inconsiderable feat. The "cordial welcome" which the document has received from General Smuts is intrinsically a stronger testimonial, though in its effect upon South African opinion may be less marked. But it is highly satisfactory that the first strong protest against the illusory nature of the declaration which has been taken to mean so much should have come from one of the Dominions, and that one the most important of all, and, with the possible exception of South Africa, the most discontented with the present position. Though it is only an Opposition protest that has come from Canada it is a weighty one, and as evidence that under a new leader the Canadian Conservatives may resume the party's Imperial tradition which an unfortunate utterance of Mr. Meighen's had broken or seriously shaken it is particularly welcome. Mr. Hugh Guthrie, the Acting-Leader of the Canadian Conservatives, "fails to see anything in the conclusions, viewed in any way, as strengthening or consolidating Imperial interests." On the contrary, he finds their tenor to be entirely in the opposite direction; As an actual statement of the status quo between the Dominions and the Mother Country, says Mr. (Juthrio, tho

Report may be of some value, but I fear the whole tendency of the document is to loosen rather than strengthen the foundations of tho Empire, without conferring any practical benefit upon the Dominions. With one exception, this is the severest condemnation of the Report that we have had. That exception is the "Daily Herald's"' description of it as "a masterpiece of evasion which produced a few high-sounding phrases," hut under the cover of amended formulae "avoided every real prohlem which arises from the present anomalous relations between Britain and ihe Dominions." The Labour organ's indictment is the more scathing, but Mr. Guthrie derives a greater weight from its restraint and from its being above any suspicion of party or anti-Imperial bias. As we argued from the outset, the declaration of equality means absolutely nothing new in regard to domestic affairs, for of these the Dominions have exercised a virtually absolute control for many years. Applied to foreign affairs the ' declaration would certainly be new, but by making the present confusion worse confounded it would, as Mr. Guthrie says, make for weakness and not strength. It would make for disintegration and not unity, and thus, unless promptly checked, must lead to ultimate disaster. Will any of those who share the fatalistic faith of the "Daily Express" in "the seemingly paradoxical truth that the more loosely knit the British Empire is, the more securely are the parts bound together" seriously tell us that the Empire would be safer with half-a-dozen foreign policies than with one? We are much relieved to see that Mr. Amery, the Dominions Secretary, is, at any rate, not among the number. In the broadcast address reported on Saturday, he emphasised the fact that the Dominions had' come of age and that their full equality with Britain was now recognised, though this does not mean equality of status, wealth, or population, as for years Britain is bound to play a major part in the defence of the Empire and settlement of foreign policy. How Mr. Amery's conclusion is to be reconciled with the declaration of equality in the Report, or even with his own reference to "full equality," we cannot say. But, even though a jarring note may mar the home-coming of Mr. Mackenzie King or General Hertzog, we are thankful that he has had the courage and the common sense to tell us the truth.