STATUS IN THE EMPIRE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 80, 16 March 1934, Page 7

STATUS IN THE EMPIRE

Position of South Africa GENERAL HERTZOG’S NEW BILL By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright CAPE TOWN, March 15. The Status Bill which General Hertzog will shortly introduce in Parliament will incorporate the Statute of Westminster and various resolutions of the Imperial Conference of 1926 and 1930 into the Statute Law of the Union. The bill is understood clearly to lay down that the King must be King of Great Britain and Ireland, who is de dared to be head of the executive in the Union and acting in that capacity only upon the advice of his Ministers in the Union. Sundry clauses in the original Act of Union relating to the power for the reservation of bills for the King’s assent are repealed in view of the new constitutional practice whereby His Majesty’s Ministers in England do not advise in affairs of the Dominions. REVOLUTIONARY DEPARTURE Neutrality in Time of War (Received March 16, 10.45 p.m.) LONDON, March 15. Discussing General Hertzog’s constitutional bills, under which the King of England would in future be known merely as the king, Professor J. H. Morgan, who recalls the preamble to the Statute of Westminster, says that if the proposal is intended to elevate the Dominion into a separate kingdom bound to England as Hanover was before the accession of Queen Victoria by a merely dynastic tie, it would be a revolutionary departure and unquestionably a step in the direction of the dissolution of the Empire. Moreover, if the Dominion became a separate kingdom it might, like Hanover, be neutral in time of war when Britain was belligerent.