THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH

Evening Star, Issue 23723, 2 November 1940, Page 9

THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH

[By Christine M. Gibson, in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor.' - ]

In these violent days, is it possible that ideas are more important than acts? It is Herr Hitler’s belief that they are. For though the German Government is made up of men who seem to put guns, aeroplanes, and tanks first, this is not quite so. Almost every day the German radio and the German newspapers are making statements about why they are at war. ‘Herr Hitler is quick enough to see that men will not put their backs into a fight if they have no belief in it. So he gives them what he says are the facts. And men who are not fighting, as well as men who are, get ideas from what he says. After a time some men see things as Herr Hitler says they are. One thing the Fuhror says is that 45,000,000 men are owners of onequarter of the earth, while unnumbered others are without living space. Even open-minded persons soon get the idea which is being put before their minds —an idea that millions of rich men in Britain are getting pleasure and support and profit from what is by right the property of others. They see the British Empire as land owned by England for the use of the English. They see something very different from the facts. Some or the true facts are: —

(1) That neither Germany nor Italy has as many persons to the square mile as Great Britain, Holland, or Belgium. The figures are (1939): Germany 362 a square mile, Italy 335, Belgium 707, Holland 673, Great Britain 488. (2) In the last five years more people have gone from the overseas Empire to Britain than have gone from Britain to the overseas Empire. r (3) The United States, which is not the owner of Canada, sends it three times as much in goods a year as does Great Britain.

(4) The amount of materials Germany got from her colonies was onehalf of 1 per cent, of her total intake of such materials. *

(5) Only 3 per cent, of the materials for manufacture on earth come from colonies.

(6) More Germans were getting a living in the City of London in July, 1914, than in all the German colonies put together. The British Empire is not the property of the English man in the street, though Herr Goebbels would have everyone see it as no less than that. The British dominions overseas are not the property of the British at all. They are in the possession of the men living in those dominions. For the government of a country is not the same thing as the owning of that country, and even if it were, the government of many parts of the British Empire today is itself in the hands of those countries. They have self-government. The men in Yorkshire or Cormvall do not make laws for the men of Canada or Australia. And the dominions do not come into a war at the order or even at the request of the British. The dominions are independent. In many important ways they are free governments. Too many persons in too many countries are not clear about this.

It is the out-of-date maps of the Empire, still widely used, which are responsible for the idea of a group of governments all of the same sort. On the maps, all the countries of the Empire are marked in the same colour. It is time to make maps in keeping with the new distribution of power settled by the Statute of Westminster in 1931, It is time to make clear to all who may be interested that the British Empire has become, over the last 20 years, a commonwealth of equal nations. The most important statement in the Statute of Westminster makes this clear enough when it says that the dominion Parliaments have the power to make changes in any Acts of Parliament of the United Kingdom having connection with them, power, in fact, tw keep such Acts from becoming a part of dominion law_ till a dominion has requested and given agreement to the putting of them into force. Britain is in the process of doing what no empire of the past has done. She is turning Empire into Commonwealth, into a society of democracies with self-government. To-day _ those democracies have come of their free will to take part in a war against forces which are a danger to free nations. And even if the development of such forces is the outcome of our behaviour to Germany after the last war, giving way to such forces will not put any wrongs done to Germany right. jn these violent days then._ when men’s minds as well as their bodies are being attacked, getting at the facts becomes all-important for keeping our values clear. And supporting the good in governments may be the best way, of putting their errors right.

This article is written in Basic—limited vocabulary—English.)