EMPIRE PROBLEMS.

Gisborne Times, Volume LI, Issue 5245, 9 August 1919, Page 5

EMPIRE PROBLEMS.

ADDRESS BY LORD MILNER

WAR’S INFLUENCE ON IMPERIAL POLITICS.

ADVICE TO THE DOMINIONS

LONDON. August 2. Lord Milner, in the Sheldon Theatre, Oxford, delivered an inaugural address on the problems of the Empire at a summer meeting of eight hundred students, including Australian and New Zealand soldiers. Lord Milner said though the war was a source of great encouragement to Imperialists at Home, a set back to Imperial politics must be expected for a time. Immeuse strides bad recently been made in organising cooperation amongst the self-governing States of the commonwealth. but these great institutions were now in abeyance. Dominion statesmen, whose participation in the war was invaluable, bad gone back to become immersed in local and, like British leaders, were not troubling about the instruments of future Imperial co-operation. Overburdened Ministers, distracted Legislatures, and a hectic press, were not ready to apply fundamental brain work to a solution of Imperial problems. Some fear was expressed that the League of Nations would tend towards disruption of the dominions and the Mother Country. Lord Milner said he did not share the fear, but it would be an irreparable disaster if in stretching out for a pax mundi we let slip the pax Britannica which had long been an assured and well-tested possession. By doing this we would be sacrificing the substance for the shadow. Tlie people of the Dominions must learn more as regards their obligation as members of the worldencircling society of nations. The United Kingdom alone carried the burden of a vast dependent Empire. In the future development of the commonwealth there was bound to be a closer connection than at present between the self-governing States and the dependencies of the Empire.