Nelson Evening Mail. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 1907. THE IMPERIAL CONFERENCE. IMPERIAL UNITY AND PARTY CRIES.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 24 April 1907, Page 2

Nelson Evening Mail. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 1907. THE IMPERIAL CONFERENCE. IMPERIAL UNITY AND PARTY CRIES.

IT is difficult, even from the somewhat fully cabled accounts of the proceedings of the Imperial Conference now sitting in London, to gauge the extent to which hostility has been exhibited to a continuance of Colonial Office control of the Imperial relations between the Motherland and the self-governing colonies. But it is apparent that in the proposed erection of a permanent Secretariat intended to give continuity to the purposes of the Conference, some of the Premiers, led by Mr Deakin, of Australia, have conveyed, or attempted to convey to the British public an entirely false idea of the Imperial sentiment in the hearts of the vast majority of the better sort of British subjects abroad. The Premiers in question, deliberately or unconsciously, are playing into the hands of political wirepullers in England. It is sought to weaken the hold of tho Liberal Party on the electorates, and the presence of the Colonial statesmen in the Old Country just now is being taken advantage of to manufacture tales of colonial grievances pretcndedly threatening to break Imperial bonds. # » # # * The first false issue raised was that by Lord Elgin, instead of ' Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman presiding over the deliberations of the Imperial Conference, there was a direct assertion by the Government of the subordination of the colonies to a British department. Yet, when Mr Joseph "Chamberlain, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, acted as Chairman of the last Conference, the Unionist journals had never a complaint to mako against it. Nor would they have any now, if it were not palpably part of their tactics to depict the Liberal Government as a rejecter of colonial overtures and a disparager and discourager of the outlying States of the Empire. Incidentally to this process colonial grievances are plentifully manufactured. For example, the "Times," according to recent cable news, is publishing a series of articles jn which the colonies are ex-

citedly pictured as finding the United Kingdom's monopoly of political power and privileges in foreign and Imperial questions "intolerable," and as "feeling miiinsulves nations brought into the area of world-politics." This in the teeth of their point-blank refusal at the last conference to participate in an Empire scheme of miltary recruitment, and, above all, Sir Wilfrid Laurier's emphatic reaßirmaUon a fortnight ago that "under no conditions would he consent to Canada being drawn into the vortex of European militarism." * • • • * The issue "severance or partnership," thus raised under "The Times'" auspices is utterly, glaringly bogus, ■says the Sydney "Daily Telegraph. There is no shadow of justification that severance is possible, much less imminent, in any part of the Empire. On the contrary, the British countries have never been so cordially united as members of the national family. There has never been a time in British, history when there was less dissatisfaction or even less talk about independence among the rash extremists who are to be found in every community. And we should not hear of the seooped-out turnip, severance, being illuminated with Tory candles ill England now if the protectionists and Imperial federationists did not fancy that it might be used to scare the English people into a belief that it was a choice between "starving themselves," as Air Ramsay Macdonald has put it, by paying higher prices for their food and provoking a disgusted and sordid Greater Britain to cut the painter.

One of the main issues raised by the section of colonial Premiers and, exploited for all it is worth for political capital by the Unionist press is that the self-governing colonies shoncl be admitted to Imperial partnership on a basis of "equality of political status. The term more applicable would bo "inequality of political status," for it would be nitting the will of the ten or eleven millions of Australasia and Canada against the forty-four millions of the United Kingdom and the many hundreds of millions of India, the Crown Colonies, and the newly-autonomous Transvaal. The converse of this position is that, under an assumed equality of political status, applied by means of the voting power, the scanty population of the self-governing states would be out-voted by Great Britain, and be forced to follow where Oreat Britain led. By this means many of the real privileges of self-government might be lost for the sake of merely illusive advantages. Notable among the losses may be named the right of completely controlling local defence and local defence forces, and the power of | expenditure in many directions, but principally local military and naval.

It will have been observed that those of the visititiK statesmen whose Governments are in closer touch with the Imperial authorities than Australasia are among those who hesitate to accept any but a loose Imperial union, notably Sir Wilfrid Laitrier, of Canada He has raised the issue that Canada cannot afford to be drawn into the maelstrom of European complications which an "equal status" tie might entail. But the bond on such a basis would be unendurable for other reasons also — it would "unite but to sever." Unity must be voluntary, elastic, just the relation between friendly business correspondents, tempted by the sentiment of old friendship and as sociation and cemented by the "blood that is thicker than water." Brothers quarrel more than mere friends do ; but both brothers and fromds may be reckoned upon as coming to one's assistance in a ti«ht place. Mutual Rive and take in commerce, an understanding thaf, the states of the Empire shall be more favoured ill trade treaties than the "most favoured" of foreign nations — little more than that is required for Imperial Union.

Where is tho Empire-binder's evi- j dence of the links of the desired closer | union on the basis of equality? Can the measure of trade preference granted by Australasia to Great Britain be regarded as one of the links? Canada gives a legitimate Customs preference, but so far from putting it forward as a feeler for any kind of constitutional union Sir Wilfrid Laurier has just declared that every nation cf the Empire [ "must be allowed a free choice in regard to its fiscal policy," and his Government proposes to bargain with fc-r--,-ign countries for reciprocity. The Australian and New Zealand "preferential tariffs" are a travesty on the name. "So long as a preferential tariff, even a munificent preference, is still sufficiently protected to exclude us altogether, it nearly so, from your markets," said Mr Chamberlain to the 1902 Colonial Conference, "it is no satisfaction to us that you have imposed even greater disability upon the same goods if they come from foreign markets." Tliaf. |s precisely t he "munificent preference" extended to lh.e Mother Country by Australia and New Zealand, whose preferential champions are now In England preaching preference to the Britisher with one mouth and clamouring with the other to have him excluded from the Commonwealth coastal trade, while their political partners at Melbourne are studying the tariff with a view to raising it high enough to keep out British imports.

We are all Imperial paitncrs and blood-brothers ill "the little things we care about." We would fight for the Rmpire to our last man, anyway till the last man who could keep the Kmpire together fell. We prefer to nee British goeds when they are of as good quality and as cheap as foreign goods. We like the British sailors on our trading vessels, 1/iuugh we prefer that they should be colonials. But the Jingo ideals of Empire-binders of the closer tie and states equality cult find adherents only in sentiment, and not in practical relations beyond a mutually advantageous trade partnership. So far preferential tariffs, the main expression of Imperial federation, have, simply fed i colossal protectionist delusion. When true preference is given, not only by the self-eovcrninir millving states, but ■ilso by the British public unsealed hv the "d?nr fend" bogey, wo fh.Ml hi nearer to n better and more Instill? Imperial union than the sentimentalists faddists, and Jingoes can ever bring us