Evening Post FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1931. CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 117, 13 November 1931, Page 6

Evening Post FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1931. CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED

Twelve months, if not five years, too late, the policy outlined in the Balfour Committee's Report and intended to be consummated in the Statute of Westminster is receiving some of the attention that it deserves. But even this belated attention we owe not to the interest which any of the Governments or Parliaments concerned are taking either in promoting the dissolution of the Empire or in preventing it, but to a discussion promoted by an unofficial body. The occasion was an address delivered by Professor J. H. Morgan, Professor of Constitutional Law in the University of London, at a meeting of the Royal Empire Society—a society which under a rather wishywashy title carries on the great Imperial work that it had pioneered as the Royal Colonial Institute.

The function, we are told, was a notable one, those present including ex-Governors-General, ex-Prime Ministers, members of the House of Lords, members of Parliament, High Commissioners, and Agents-General.

The importance of the subject and the representative character and personal distinction of those who took part in the debate fully justify the length of the excellent report which was supplied to us by cable yesterday. . In view of what Professor Morgan described as "the manner in which the lawyers had framed the Statute 'behind closed doors,'" and of the languid interest which either lawyer or layman appears to have since taken in a subject of perilous importance, it is highly satisfactory that. law was strongly represented at the meeting. The debate was probably just as well-informed as any of those which preceded the adoption of the Bill and also far more candid.

As a formula the definition of Dominion status which was proposed by the Balfour Committee and adopted by the Imperial Conference of 1926 was worthy of the adroit dialectician who framed it; but we were never able to understand why a dialectical masterpiece should be hailed as a masterpiece of statesmanship except by those who looked to disintegration as the ultimate goal of the Empire and welcomed this definition as a convenient steppingstone. The Balfour Committee expressed the opinion that "nothing would be gained by attempting to lay down a Constitution for the British Empire," but it was satisfied that the position and mutual relation of Britain and the self-governing Dominions could be "readily defined." In italics the famous definition followed:—

They are autonomous communities within the British Empire, eqvfal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

It is impossible to say that this definition has done nothing for the Empire, since it sent General Hertzog home to tell his people that there was no need for them to fight for independence since they had it already, and a recent rebuff to Republican agitators proves his sincerity. Even the Irish Free State might be content to endure the continued protection of the British Empire If only that intolerable bridge of servitude represented by the right of appeal to die Privy Council, already almost nullified, were formally abolished.

In the Balfour Committee's Report the definition of Dominion status was followed by a warning that it would still be possible for the unintelligent foreigner, to misunderstand the British Empire:—

A foreigner endeavouring to understand the true character of the British Empire by the aid of this formula alone would bo tempted to think that it was desired to mako mutual interference impossible than to make mutual co-operation easy. Such a criticism, however, completely ignores the historic situation.

■"The Times" certainly does not represent the views of ignorant foreigners, and may safely be acquitted of completely ignoring the historic situation when it discusses this subject. Yet even with the aid of the new light that Lord Balfour had just provided it was compelled in its review of the Imperial Conference of 1926 to confess its ignorance of the most elementary points in the Constitution of the Empire.

The Keport faces frankly the extraordinary complications which are bound to encumber —do already encumber— the relations of the British Empire with foreign countries, said "The Times." Arc we a single, unit for purposes of diplomacy? Or half-a-dozen separate units? What is our position in the [negotiation and conclusion of treaties!

Ii- what guise do wo take part in international conferences'? How far can one nation commit its partners to the obligations which it has undertaken for itself 1 All that laborious thinking and skilful drafting can achieve has gone to providing answers to these questions, but there is nothing unforeseen about any of (hem, and the practical result will be precisely what we all please to make it.

The Balfour Report may indeed have thrown some light upon that constitutional chaos which some of us are still proud to call an Empire and others prefer to call a Commonwealth of Nations, though perhaps with equal impropriety, since even a Commonwealth implies some sort of organic cohesion. But the light thus thrown upon the chaos did not reduce it to order or help in that direction, and, though on the other hand the Report cannot be said to have aggravated the confusion, that will actually be the result if its recommendations are given legal effect in the Statute of Westminster. Mr. Stanley Bruce, who as Prime Minister of Australia was a member of the Conference of 1926, informed the Royal Empire Society's meeting that such an enactment would be contrary to the original intention.

I deplore the attempt legally to dofine the Empire's constitutional relations, he said. lam perfectly certain it cannot be done. If it could it would not work. Earl Balfour's formula on which the Statute is based was not intended to be anything but a formula. The Empire can continue on a basis of willing co-oporation or break up just as nicely under the Statute as without.

We should be glad to believe that Mr. Bruce's contention is valid, but what we take to be the worst parts of the Statute of Westminster—the repeal of the Colonial Laws Validity Act and the indefinite extension of the Dominions' powers of extra-terri-torial legislation—are the direct outcome of the inquiry which the Balfour Committee recommended. If Mr. Bruce missed the mark Lord Atkin hit it when he expressed the opinion

that those who were Prime Ministers for the time being adopted the formula without seriously considering its legal implications.

Lord Atkin, whose attack upon the Statute of Westminster'seems to have been just as slashing as that of Professor Morgan himself, talked the kind of law that a layman can appreciate when he said:—

It is a very serious thing to cut away a central means of action without providing some practicable executive substitute, especially in times when the whole Empire might have to act in combination.

And he urged that the Bill should be referred to a joint committee of both Houses. It seems quite clear that, as Lord Atkin suggested, the Imperial Conference of 1926 did not fully understand what it was doing, and probably the same may be said of the Conference of 1930. The Experts Committee, which was the connecting link between the two Conferences, had also, as Mr. Coates has told us, misunderstood its instructions. If these advisory bodies have all blundered, it is more imperative that, with the help of the best constitutional lawyers in both Houses, the Imperial Parliament—the term is strictly correct here—should know exactly what it is doing before passing a Bill which, in its present form, is admirably calculated to make the existing confusion worse confounded and to promote the disintegration of the Empire.