IMPERIAL CONFERENCE

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXI, Issue 15494, 21 December 1910, Page 9

IMPERIAL CONFERENCE

PRESS CO.M.M ENT. United Prcsß A-socialion—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, December 10. The “Times,” in an article on the coming Imperial Conference, states that Australia very properly wishes to press the principle of international arbitration and the terms of the Declaration of London. On both <pies--1 ions she will find Canada supporting her. They indicate the immediate necessity of devising moans whereby the opinion of tho dominions would make itself felt -in conducting imperial relations with foreign Powers. The. voice must be the Empire's, not Britain’s alone. New Zealand urges the creation of an Imperial Council. Everything depends on its form, and the “Times” doubts whether the Council would ever, with purely advisory powers, prove in consonance with Australian and Canadian ideas. The need, tho paper says, is not for deliberation by a central authority which seems in some sense to impair the autonomy of tho countries of the Empire, but rather for machinery for the thorough and rapid personal exchange of views.