EMPIRE UNITY

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 3 December 1926, Page 5

EMPIRE UNITY

EXISTS WITHOUT CONTROL. BOUND BY COMMON IDEALS. MISSION OF DUKE OF YORK. BY CABLB- -PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT LONDON, Dec. 1.

A distinguished assemblage attended the Pilgrims’ dinner at the Hotel Victoria.

Viscount Cave (chairman) was flanked by the Duke ot York and the Prince of Wales. Earl Balfour, proposing the Duke of York’s health, said the Duke was going on a mission which was neither administrative nor diplomatic, but was not less important to the Empire on that account. None could accomplish it so well as members of his house, in achieving personal contact, thus uniting every part of the Empire. Earl Balfour referred to the similar missions of the King and the Prince of Wales, hut said he doubted if either knew the incalculable value of their services. The Duke of York’s tour supplied a vital link, because it occurred after the Imperial Conference. It was said there was nothing new in the resolutions at which the conference had arrived, “but what has never been explicitly stated is the moral and emotional ibasis upon which the whole fabric exists. That has now been unanimously accepted.” “The new thing is not that there is no control by the Mother Country of the self-governing Dominions, but that the self-governing portions of the Empire explicitly regard themselves as elements in a great unity which does not depend on control, but on common ideals. It is hard to accept the belief that the great Empire can exist without control . “For the first time we have announced to the Empire that we are an Empire of which the self-governing portions are united by something greater, more sublime, and more effective. It is only now that the Empire begins to be what it was pre-destined to be. It is only now brought home to its constituents that it is their business to manage their affairs as they please, but that they are all parts of a greater whole. I am certain the Dominions will always be ready to offer their services to the Empire whenever the need arises.

“An Empire in which control no longer counts must depend upon personal intercourse, and for this reason the service which the Duke of York is about to render will lie immensely helpful. He comes of a family to which all citizens of the Empire loyally turn. He and the Duchess are singularly gifted 'for the task they have taken upon themselves. The services they will render cannot, in the existing circumstances of the Empire, be too highly over-valued. Therefore we not only give them God-speed because we love and esteem them on their own account, but because of the great- service- they are about to render to the Empire of which they are devoted children.”