Evening Post. FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 1927. SOUND GOSPEL

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 17, 21 January 1927, Page 8

Evening Post. FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 1927. SOUND GOSPEL

The excellent impression which Mr. Bruce made in the United States by his candid but discreet handling of delicate issues was confirmed by a similax performance in Canada. In the United States Anglo-Ameri-can relations, the war debts, and the cause and cure of American unpopularity in Europe were the test questions, and so happily was Mr. Bruce's candour in the treatment of them tempered by tact that we were told that "a torrent of editorial opinion commended the Prime Minister's frankness, and praised him as .the interpreter of the true state of affairs." In Canada the crucial questions were the new Dominion status, Imperial defence, and the responsibilities of foreign policy. Three points may be mentioned to illustrate the formidable difficulties which such matters as these present to candid treatment by any visitor. One is the chilly, suspicious, and evasive treatment which all Imperial issues have recently received from all the party leaders in Canada. Another is the ridiculous fuss about the mild suggestion made by Admiral Field during his visit to Canada, with. the Special Service Squadron, that' it was for the Dominion to consider whether it was doing enough for the protection of its sea-borne commerce.. The third and most recent of those warnings to visitors was supplied by the enthusiasm with which Mr. Mackenzie King was received on his return from the Imperial Conference arid of the grounds on which it appears to have been principally based.

Little was said about the significance of this reception in the cabled reports on the subject, but for our readers, the gap was filled by the illuminating letter from our Vancouver correspondent which we published yesterday.

Heralded, said our correspondent, as the conquering hero -who has secured the alteration i}i the unwritten Constitution of the British .Empire, Mr. Mackenzie King, Prime Minister o£ Canada, has arrived.home from the Imperial Conference. .;. v . The tumult and the shouting of the aggressive self-government" group "have broken out again with the return o.f its hero, metaphorically with the scalp of J;he British Empire at his belt.

The "aggressive self-government group" is .fortunately not the Liberal Party, but on issues, however momentous, which are popularly regarded as non-essentials, the pace of a party is apt to be the pace of its slowest members. The anaemic condition to which Mr. Mackenzie King's Imperialism had been reduced before the Conference had thus been dictated to a large extent by the bitter memories of conscription in French Quebec. The exact status in Mr. King's party of the "Liberal writers" whose interpretation of the "new Constitution" is cited by our correspondent does not appear, but he vouches for one of them as a man of standing, and their views at least serve to illus-. trate the kind of thing with which the Canadian leaders have to contend.

Some of them, says our correspondent, go so far as to say that the King ia authorised to take up his residence* in Ottawa, if he should choose, and to administer the British Empire from there, and' that he is equally empowered to rule his subjects from a base set up for him in Melbourne, or Canberra. He may, says one influential. Liberal publicist, send his Governor over to London to represent him with the English people.

The fact that these delightful constitutional theories have been ridiculed by a minority "loyal to the old forms of the Empire," which our correspondent estimated at perhaps a third of the population, did not make it any easier for a visitor to deal with the same issue. In a country where the normal sensitiveness of all the Dominions to outside criticism appears to be aggravated by the same conditions, whether geographical, climatic, or whatnot, which have made the same weakness so conspicuous a characteristic of the United States, Mr. Bruce's discussion of Imperial problems was made all the more difficult by the extent to which they had become a party issue. But he displayed the same frankness and the same tactics as in the United States, and is credited with the same success. He has taken a more sanguine view of the glories of the new status than Mr. Coates or any other representative New Zealander has taken or is likely to take, but he did not on that account confine himself to the empty platitudes with which London and the Empire were so deeply inundated at the time of the Conference as to obscure the real issue. The new status at the most means opportunities— the opportunity to the Dominions to do the right thing by playing the game, pulling their weight, and sharing to the full the responsibilities and the expenses as well as the rights and the privileges of the Empire—the opportunity also to quicken the drift towards disintegration,

which their selfish parochialism has developed and to leave to the Mother Country a monopoly.of the efforts to check it. With genuine statesmanship Mr. Bruce has been advocating in Canada the honourable and difficult course.

The general character both of Mr. Bruce's speeches and of their effect upon Canadian opinion was summarised in a Press Association message of 9th January as follows:—

The volume of editorial opinion both in Eastern and "Western Canada indicates that no delicate situation has been created by Mr. Bruce's outspoken comments, which have stressed throughout the speeches' central idea, namely, that the new. status in interImperial and international affairs implies added obligations to take an active, not a passive, part in the formulation of foreign policy. He pointed out that the Imperial Conference said to the world-that Britain alone could not express the policy of the Empire, therefore it was obligatory on every portion of the Empire to contribute to the policy expressed.

With the addition of the corollary that every Dominion must give "practical support in any measures necessary to give effect to such'a foreign pdlicy," and "should contribute to Empire defence in the same proportion as it contributes to foreign policy," this statement seems to cover the essential points of .a true Dominion Imperialism about as well as it could be done. Following Mr. Bruce into Canada a few days later, Mr. Coates was able to express his entire agreement with Mr. Bruce's doctrine and to add two valuable

points.

The Dominions must, he said, share fully the cost of Imperial defence, or accept a position of national inferiority.

This is excellent. For the Dominions to sponge on the Mother Country for their defence is not "nationalism" but' flunkeyism. Mr. Coates hit the mark again when he foreshadowed the gradual increase of our per capita contribution to defence until the amount "compares favourably with that of the Mother Country." There is room for a complete equality here, and we trust that New Zealand may be the first to reach it. The excellent effect of the sound gospel preached by Mr. Bruce and Mr. Coates in Canada will be materially increased when they have brought the practice of their own countries into line with their

theories,