MR. MILKER'S VIEW

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 77, 28 September 1938, Page 15

MR. MILKER'S VIEW

"RESULTS DISAPPOINTING"

I From his own point of view he felt ' that the results of the British Commonwealth Relations Conference in Sydney recently were disappointing, stated Mr. Frank Milner, C.M.G., one of the New Zealand delegation, who returned by !the Wanganella from Sydney today. I Mr. Milner emphasised that that was his own opinion. "I would venture to say that from the average New Zealand standpoint the results of this, the second Empire Relations Conference, held at Lapstone, Sydney, outside of course of the rich opportunity of liberalising contacts with delegates from every part of the Empire, were disappointingly meagre," said Mr. Milner, in an interview. "Such a conference is certainly worth while as an assessment of Dominion political and economic trends and of the resultant effect of these national urges on the Empire as a whole. Its personnel, however, should constitute a balanced and authoritative! representation of informed public opinion in each constituent part of the Empire. Certainly delegates through their possession of copies of the numerous data papers and books prepared by experts in each delegation, and in a lesser degree through listening to the somewhat appalling volubility of the conference, are qualified to discharge a valuable interpretative function in their respective communities. NEW FORMULA REQUIRED. "It was frequently emphasised that five years ago at Toronto the inaugural Empire Relations' Conference formed a common objective for Empire foreign policy in collective security as embodied in the League of Nations.. The collapse of that idealistic fabric imposed upon the present conference the necessity of devising a fresh comprehensive formula broad enough to satisfy the divergent views of the Dominions. According to the official recorder's report such a lowest common denominator could not be found as an outcome of the discussions of the present conference in any affirmation of' intrinsic or inherent values and ideals of the Commonwealth as a political entity; but only in its moral function implicit in the inter-relation of its parts as the administration of a future world order. "This pious postulation of a solely millennial justification for the Empire is altogether too evanescent and phantasmal to satisfy the viewpoint of the average New Zealander, no matter how it may appear to the doctrinaire. We find in the Empire as it exists 1 today, even after the full implications lof the Statute of Westminster have I been worked out by Canada, Ireland, and South Africa, certain inherent values which constitute a distinctive ! spiritual patronising and of which we i regard ourselves and the other Dominions as joint beneficiaries. Their values are (1) the conservation of world peace j and the rule of law; (2) the voluntary association of free peoples in pursuit

of the democratic way of life; (3) the fidicuary philosophy now being implemented in the administration of India and the dependent Empire, notably in Africa; (4) the countering of interracial strife by the synthesis of East and West now being attempted in the Indian Federation; (5) the vindication of ideals of justice, liberty, and tolerance now increasingly animating the Empire. DISPARITY IN OUTLOOK. "Although Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand unhesitatingly support the Motherland in affirming the spiritual solidarity of the Empire and its supreme justification as protagonist in vindicating their ideals, this attitude is not shared by Canada, South Africa, or India. Strongly-differentiated geographical and. population problems account for this disparity in outlook. Canada, as interpreted at the conference, viewed itself primarily as a North American nation eligible for membership of the Pan-American Union and only secondarily as a member of the British confraternity of nations. Perhaps the academic preponderance in the Canadian personnel accounted both for this viewpoint and for their insistence upon the theoretical right of secession and the consequent right of neutrality even when the Motherland was at war. It must be remembered that as opposed to our compact British homogeneity, Canada's population was now barely 50 per cent. British born. The impenitent nationalism, or rather the intransigent republicanism of French-speaking Canada, accounts for this attitude. Their problem of racial dualism calls for a wide charity of interpretation on our part. "Again Canada's absolute geographical security guaranteed by the United States explains its assertion of unqualified national sovereignty, even to the point of rejecting consultation on joint Empire foreign policy, and of providing its own diplomatic machinery. EMPIRE FABRIC STRETCHED. "In the laudable attempt to provide comprehensive coverage by a formula wide enough to embrace conflicting viewpoints, the fabric of the Empire has now been stretched to impalpable fineness. Certainly, the average New Zealander could not breathe in much of the fine ether of doctrinaire discussion- He is habituated to a robuster atmosphere with more body in it. As a realist he fully recognises the absolute dependence of this quantitatively insignificant and segregated country on the Royal Navy for its very life, and in the British market for its sustenance. Moreover, he is deeply conscious of his incommensurable obligation to Britain in the realms of the mind and the spirit. Besides these transcendent things abstract quibbles over status and functions pall into, insignificance. Australia adopts the same attitude and, if anything, is now more staunchly Empire-minded than New Zealand. India at the conference was stridently disgruntled, morbidly suspicious, rhetorically clamorous. South Africa was benevolently neutral to the Empire. Canada was primarily obsessed With the problem of its own national unity, and apathetic to the Empire. Ireland, fast burying the past, was wholeheartedly in support. A SUMMARY. •'Not to end on a pessimistic note, it is safe to say that certain basic principles or communal ideas emerge from the verbal welter with general endorsement. These may be summarised is follows:—(1) The Empire is not static, but is motivated by a dynamic philosophy of trusteeship, devolution, and autonomy; (2) the unitary conception of the Empire is replaced by Britannic nationalism, a system of free co-opera-tive States displaces the idea of a federal compact; (3) the new ideal is diversity within a free co-operation; (4) the ultimate justification of the British Commonwealth of Nations is not from within but from without in its contribution to a system of world order. . . ' "To the ringing challenge of an Irish leader for a practical alternative to the British Empire in its great task of world stabilisation on a broader basis of liberty, justice, and tolerance no answer was given or could be given. Such a challenge silences both critic yvfid cynic "It should be added that an abiding impression of the conference was the ability and broad liberalism of the well-balanced British delegation. Its leaders showed rare magnanimity and dignity in the face of not infrequent criticism, depreciation, and wilful misinterpretation." Others who attended the conference and who also returned by the Wanganella were Messrs. E. P..Hay,, A. W. Free S R. Morrison, and D. O. Williams. The leader of the New Zealand delegation, the Hon. W. Downie Stewart, is expected to return in another week. ____«_