The Evening Star MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1926. IMPERIAL CONFERENCE.

Evening Star, Issue 19412, 22 November 1926, Page 6

The Evening Star MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1926. IMPERIAL CONFERENCE.

The Imperial Conference has not succeeded, any more than its predecessors, in reducing to exact terms all the details and all the implications which follow from the principle of an equal fellowship which is now accepted as the basis of the Constitution of the Empire. Such rigid rules and interpretations, even if they could be worked out in a few days’ discussions round a council table, would be more likely to be an embarrassment than an aid in the future. It has never been the fashion of British constitutional development to bind itself so straitly in advance. General principles, once laid down as the result of experience, are left to develop themselves in detail, as time and further experience may direct Wheai the committee which. sought to prescribe the best methods of treatymaking was finding, after days of consultation, almost invincible difficulties in its task, one prediction was that a definite solution would not be attempted, but that the position would be covered by an explanatory general statement. General statements may be found to predominate when the full report of the conference is issued, but that is not to say that very precious value will not have been derived from its deliberations. On the most difficult question of interimperial relationship, “how an Empire can bo at the same time one and six,” conclusions are now

published which have been at once accepted as forming a new landmark in the development of policy. The theory of equality was first laid down as am object, rather than as descriptive of a condition already existing, by the conference which met in war time in 1917. The importance of the latest resolutions does not lie so much in the elucidation of that doctrine, though at some points it has been elucidated and made more practicable, as in the renewed emphasis laid on it, and in the fact that it permeates the whole report. It is definitely affirmed that every self-govern-ing member of the Empire is now the master of its own destinies, subject to no compulsion whatever. Though every dominion must be the sole judge of the extent of its co-operation in Imperial matters, it is not feared that any cause will he imperilled by this equality of status. “ The old conception of Britain,” it has been well said, “as the parent nation or globe round which satellite ■ dominions revolve has been finally swept away.” In accordance with the principle that has been thus confirmed, a change has been made in the functions of Gover-nors-General, which is more important, probably, for its constitutional significance than for any practical disadvantage which it removes. Dominion Governments will forward their communications directly, in future, to the British Government, instead of through the Governor-General. Probably there was no time lost under the previous system, but the change accentuates the new equality of the dominions, under which the Governor-General is recognised as solely and entirely the representative of the King, and not at all as the representative of the British Government. Previously he was a representative of both. Since the Vice-regal head of the dominion State will no longer be a channel of communication with London, the necessity arises for the appointment of some other official with a diplomatic status to represent the British Government in dominions, as the High Commissioners ought to represent them in London; but that development is left over for the present. The change proposed in the King’s title, which would omit “ of the United Kingdom,” forms a like concession to logic. ‘ There has been no “United Kingdom,” in the old sense, since the Irish Free State was established as a dominion, part of tho outer fabric of the Empire. The treaty procedure has been revised with a degree -of definiteness which reflects unusual credit on the committee responsible for it. The lines of the agreement readied by the conference of three years ago have been followed and extended. Any Government, it is laid down, must obtain the other Governments’ assent before involving them in active treaty obligations; but lest delays which might be prohibitive of treaties should result from this agreement it is provided that, after a certain time, in the case of Governments which have been informed pf the proposed negotiations, and have not objected, silence may be interpreted as giving consent. , Treaties will be made in the names of

the heads of the States, and if a pact is made in the name of the King it will be as a symbol of the'special relationship between the different parts of the Empire. A number of questions affecting the tietailed relations and business of the six motions have been left over for further consideration. Perhaps the greatest of all merits in the constitutional resolutions of the conference is that all the parties to it are satisfied with them. British tact and kindness, Britain’s plain anxiety to be reasonable, and more than reasonable, to all the young dominions who may feel at times too much confidence in their own importance and strength, has evidently impressed its delegates. “Our endeavors have been to build up, not to destroy,” says General Hertzog. It is easy to believe that he has learned much from it.