FEARESS FAITH

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 39, 15 February 1930, Page 10

FEARESS FAITH

THE BRITISH EMPIRE

A BANDING OF NATIONS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, 22nd January.

A visit from men like Mr. Bruce and General Smuts, with their'fearless faith in tho British Empire and their unceasing eiforts to make it a huge interdependent, economic amalgam, is vastly appreciated iv Canada. General Sinuts's whirlwind visit to Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto recalled the Do-, minion tour of Mr. Bruce and his earnest gospel of adequate naval defence in 1926. ' !

Mr. Bruce left his mark on Canada "from sea to sea" in a reawakened desire on the part of Canadians to cooperate more heartily than ever in the struggle that must go on to maintain British homogeneity at a level that precludes possible disintegration. General Smuts, in less measure, due to his brief stay, breathed new lifo into the struggle.' For struggle there is. Only a day ago, the Dominion Conservative Leader said at Victoria: "The forces of disintegration are at work. They must be checked. They will never be checked with tho British Ambassador living in one street in a foreign capital and the Canadian- Minister in another." Mr. Bennett did not go further. He has facilities enjoyed by few of sensing national tendencies, it would bo interesting to learn where he notes the signs of breaking up.

General Smuts, in his three addresses in Canada, did not deal with signs of disintegration, but his reiterated plea for unity left no doubt as to the fear that inspired it. In his address to the Empire and Canadian Clubs at Ottawa, lie said: "The fellow-feeling of tho different races under the British flag is tho greatest political group of the time —it solves a problem humanity has been seeking to solvo for a thousand years." MODEL FOE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. That the founders of the League of Nations had the British Empire before them as a model was his firm belief, he told an interviewer in New York. "We did not forsee, ten years ago, when the League of Nations was instituted, that, it would assume its present form of providing a forum in which the Representatives of the nations could sit around the table and discuss their problems. The Leaguo has made that practice habitual. Once your people get talking out their troubles around the table, the* war mentality disappears. "In July, 1014, Sir Edward Grey, even at the last minute, was striving to get tho nations together. If he could only have got them into a roundtable discussion, the war might never have occurred. But that was impossible. There was no habit, as thore is now. You can see how different things are now. Instead of talking war, the nations get together and deliberate over the matters that aft'ect them, with the result that war recedes more and more into the background.

"Many people still believe that the League was an idea suddenly conjured out .of the.clouds. That is not the case. The basis of the League was the British Empire. The Imperial Conferences which have been held since the 'eighties were the foundations on which wo built. Wo appreciated the fact that, since the British Empire comprised one-quarter of the world's population, the practices followed by that body could be followed by tho remaining threo-fourths. Tho periodical conferences held among the membors of the Empire furnished the standard we sought to apply to all the nations of tho world. I feel that the last ten years have fully justified our work."