The Hawera Star. SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 1925. IMPERIAL CONFERENCE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 3 January 1925, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 1925. IMPERIAL CONFERENCE.

Delivered every evening by 5 o'clock in fTnwera Manaia, Normanby, Olcaiawa, Eltham Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuni, Opunake. Otakeho. Manutalii, Alton, Ifurleyville, Paten. Waver ley, Mokoia, Whakainara, Ohangai, Merernere, Fraser Hoad. and Ararata.

The reluctance of the Dominions to participate . in the proposed special Imperial Conference on the Geneva Protocol is becoming increasingly apparent. Although the British Cabinet is to consider the Dominions’ replies on Monday, to-day’s cables report that Canada alone has so far forwarded an answer. That Dominion suggests consultation by cable, in view of the difficulty Mr. Mackenzie King will experience in visiting London in March, but if the other Dominions think a persona! conference necessary Canada will join in. However, the other major Dominions —New Zealand, Australia, South Africa,—(although they

have not officially replied, arc none of them enamored of the idea oi packing their Prime Ministers off to London for a. meeting in March, unless there be some affair of vital Imperial concern demanding attention; .and the Genova Protocol can hardly be classed a.s such. Little Newfoundland, whose main claim to a seat at the council table of the Empire is her proud position as the isenior British colony, will also willingly do as the rest may decide. No Dominion is rushing this conference, but the readiness of Canada. and Newfoundland to ho represented in London should that be the general wish is one. more argument in favour of the proposal so insistently pressed by Mr. Massey: that, while London must always remain the Empire’s capital, Imperial Conferences should .sometimes he held in overseas Britain. Take the present ease. Now Zealand, Australia and South Africa, have their own affairs to attend to, and the heads of the several Governments must think twice before they commit themselves to a visit to London involving from two or three months spent in getting there and returning. No one’s imperialism is so paltry that he begrudges tbe time spent" in actual conference; but when a four weeks’ conference means that a Prime Minister is /absent from bis own Dominion for four months the seriousness of the position comes to be felt, fn fifty years’ time the Prime Minister of New Zealand may be within as easy reach of London as his Canadian confrere is now; hut, until that day, much the best solution of the problem would be to take the mountain to Mahomet by convening a conference at Cape Town, or \ancon vor, or Ottawa. The saving of time to Australian and New Zealand delegates would be very considerable, and any inconvenience to which British statesmen might be put would be more than compensated by the firsthand experience they would gain ol social and political conditions in the Dominions. Ten years ago the Dominions were Britain’s daughters; to-day they are rather junior partners. The war gave ia tremendous impetus to the idea of the British Commonwealth and. while their loyalty is not one whit abated, the tendency of the Dominions to-day is to resent any suggestion, even any implication, that the United Kingdom is the Empire and London the one and only rendezvous of the Empire’s leaders. The Prince of Wales is Prince of the British Empire as none of his ancestors bias ever been. —and the result of his travels has been to draw tighter those invisible bonds which really bind u-s closer to the Motherland the more we assert our right to some measure of independence within the Empire. The break-down of the negotiations for a conference in March is not a matter for concern, for, as The Times bluntly puts it, “the attitude of tbe Dominions to the Geneva Protocol is sufficiently notorious in advance.” And, if tbe reluctance of the outer Dominions to be specially represented in London this Spring impresses the authorities at Home in the direction of looking afield for a conference meeting-place, the incident may play an important part in the evolution of our Imperial Constitution.