The Hawera Star. MONDAY. AUGUST 15, 1927. DOMINIONS’ SECRETARY ON TOUR.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 15 August 1927, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

MONDAY. AUGUST 15, 1927. DOMINIONS’ SECRETARY ON TOUR.

Delivered every evening by 5 o’clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Bltharn. Mangatoki, Kaponga. Alton, Hurleyville. Patea, Waverley, Mokoia, Whakamara, Obangai, Meremere. Fraser ltoad and Ararata.

The Secretary of State for the Dominions is now launched upon his tour of the Empire, his first place of call being South Africa. It has become accepted that frequent consultation between the heads of the various States is a valuable means of keeping the machinery of the Empire in smooth working order, but up to the present the accepted system has made representatives of the Dominions familiar with the problems and policy of Great Britain without providing the means for giving British statesmen a first-hand knowledge of conditions in the overseas parts of the Empire. Mr Amery has now set out to bridge the gap and at the same time establish a precedent which, in all probability, will have far-reaching effects upon the development of a policy for the Empire in the future. The tour Mr Amery is engaged upon, like the creation of the department of which he is head, is a sign of development in the relationship of the Dominions and. the Homeland. There was a time wlien a BritisH community, founded in a new land, declared for independence and won it by the sword, but there has been no repetition of that outstanding piece of British history. The easy grant of self-government, the policy of non-interference to which Britain has gro-wn accustomed and steadfastly adhered, and the enlargement of status from colony' to Dominion have taken the place of that rigid attitude towards overseas development possessions and dependencies which led the American colonists to revolt. Of recent years there has been free acknowledgment that the autonomous States within the Empire have made such progress toward adult nationhood that even the semblance of control has become obsolete. The culmination came' at the last Imperial Conference when the independence and equality of all the self-governing units were crystallised in a formula which w'ould have sounded startling had it not merely defined something which everybody concerned already knew to exist. No Government has ever tried to push those conditions to their logical conclusion, and none is any the more likely to do so now that they have been put into words. The American Declaration of Independence was an act of separation. The declaration of general independence formulated at the Imperial Conference w r as an act of union. It was so accepted by the majority in all the Dominions affected, where it is generally recognised that under it, so long as sympathy and understanding are cultivated, the dissolution of the Empire, periodically predicted, is less than ever likely to occur. But to cultivate those feelings is a task still worthy of care and thought. Though there has been little evidence of action in the intervening months, it was generally considered that the decisions of the Imperial Conference called for the creation of new consultative machinery for use by Britain and the Dominions. The Governor-General, it was said, was relieved of all duties except those as personal representative of the King. The conference itself declared “that closer personal touch should be established between Great Britain and the Dominions.” Mr Amery, among the first words he has said after arrival at his first stopping place, has declared his purpose to be the furtherance of that objective. It need not 'be imagined that the Secretary for the Dominions is engaged oh a mission for the establishment of a formal line of communication, for there is no reason to give it that rigidly official j interpretation. It is designed, rather, to show the Dominions that their affairs are watched, not by a soulless department, but by men who are anxious to see and to understand and to approach such problems as that mentioned, wellinformed.