COLONIAL EMPIRE

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 110, 12 May 1927, Page 11

COLONIAL EMPIRE

AN ENTITY OF ITS OWN

PROBLEMS OF TROPICS

PRODIGIOUS RESOURCES

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, 11th May.

At the opening of the Colonial Conference in London the following message was sent to the King:—

"At our first meeting we Governors and other representatives of Colonies, Protectorates, and Mandated territories desire to express our loyalty and fidelity to the King and to assure Your Majesty and Her Majesty the Queen of the loyalty and devotion of the many peoples and races throughout the world whom we represent."

When the Colonial Conference resumed the following reply was received from the King to the message addressed to His Majesty:—

"It has been a source of much pleasure to me to receive the message from the Governors and other representatives of Colonies, Protectorates, and Mandated Territories. The Queen joins with me in thanking them for their reassurance of the loyalty and devotion of the many peoples whom they represent. I wish all success to the deliberations upon which they are about to enter."

A NEW CONCEPTION.

Addressing the Conference, Mr. L. O. M. Amery, Colonial Secretary, said that this was the first Conference representative of the Governments of the British Colonial Empire. The conception of the Colonial Empire as an entity of its own —important constituent element—in the wider framework of the British Empire with characteristics and problems differentiating it, on the one hand, from the Commonwealth of equal, self-governing nations and, on the other hand, from the great Empire of India, was one which was only gradually dawning upon the mind of the general public and, indeed, even on the minds of those directly connected with the conduct of Imperial affairs. It was a conception which would, he believed emerge clearer and stronger as the result of the deliberations of the Conference. '

Speaking of the immense extent of the resources- of the Colonial Empire Mr. Amery mentioned that this undeveloped State comprised over 2,000,----000 square miles, with a population of 50,000,000 people, with trade already exceeding £500,000,000 yearly and doubling itself every few years, but capable of infinitely greater and far more rapid expansion.

BEWTLDEItINO DIVERSITY,

Its problems—constitutional, economic, and cultural—were endlessly diverse. Under all that almost bewildering diversity lay a large measure of unity. The Colonial Empire was almost wholly tropical and sub-tropical, interested in all the economic and health problems of the tropics. Its populations were mostly non-European-and largely primitive, lhere was also a community of ideals and purpose animating the devoted and splendid Colonial service. But while there was this large measure of unity in the problems of the Colonial Empire and the spirt in which they were approached, there was very little agricultural or administrative unity. There were 36 different Governments, each entirely separate. This system, with its lack of co-ordination, had certain great advantages. Each Colonial Government, each Colonial service had grown up on tho spot by the continuous process of local evolution from the days of the first historical connection with Britain The Conference discussed the question of the recruitment and training of civil servants for* the Colonies.