THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, MAY 11, 1907. THE IMPERIAL CONFERENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13485, 11 May 1907, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, MAY 11, 1907. THE IMPERIAL CONFERENCE.

♦ , — The Imperial Conference has now practically come to a close. In a few days the representatives of the great self-governing colonies, which . the bulk of the people at Home are only beginning to* realise constitute what is known as the Empire, ..will have taken their departure for their respective countries beyond the seas. The public interest which for weeks - has centred around them and their mission will be transferred to other ;■■ men and other matters. In the fierce and bitter controversies which are likely to. be provoked by the pro--1 posals of the Government for the reform of the House of Lords and the granting of some form of Home Rule '■ to Ireland, they are, it. may be, doomed to be speedily: forgotten. In these days great questions succeed \ ■' one another ■; so rapidly that it is ' difficult,, if not impossible, for public attention to remain concentrated, on any particular one save for a few, brief and fleeting moments. Nevertheless, they are all slowly, perhaps in some ; instances , imperceptibly, moving towards their final consum- : • mation. No great movement, social j or political,- we firmly believe, when j once started is ever permanently- arrested until it has reached its de-1 : stined end. Its progress may be retarded ;; it may seem : to make, no j ; advance for even long periods, and to be, to all outward appearances,' j

dead or dying j- but far. below the surface its roots are full of vigour and vitality, growing unseen and preparing the sap of a new life. From this reflection it is possible ;to derive; some crumbs of comforting thought in reviewing the. results of the Imperial Conference. What it has been able to accomplish may ap- j pear to be small and trifling in com- i parison with the purposes in which i it failed. But if it-has; succeeded, as we believe, in placing only a tiny piece of leaven in the dull and unimaginative mass of public opinion in the Old Country it has not met in vain. Time will do the rest, arid there can be no doubt whatever, that time is on the side of the colonies. Neither the British Government nor, perhaps, the British/ people who only see as /through a glass darkly, are just now prepared to concede preferential trade. The «pell of Cobdenism has not yet been broken. It still exercises its power of enchantment over large numbers, who continue to believe, with a tenacity that nothing can loosen, that the fiscal policy of Great Britain has made her great and prosperous, and that any departure from that policy, however ■ slight, would bo attended by disastrous results. They are like the Bourbonsthey learn nothing and forget nothing. : They, remember the days of the Corn Laws when the bread of the people was taxed in order to raise the rents of the landlords. They remember that Free Trade was followed by an unexampled prosperity—-due-not to the fiscal change, but to the fact that Great Britain;. became almost the sole workshop of the world. They do not see that the conditions which then existed have completely "changed. They do not see that the rise of the great colonies has made it possible for the food supplies of the Empire to be raised within itself, and l that foreign countries are no longer dependent on Great Britain for their manufactures. To.reason with them is useless. Their minds are made up and no arguments however cogent, no facts however convincing, are likely to convert them. But if the leaven works, their conversion will come some day. The failure of the Conference ,on the preference question, though a cause of deep disappointment to the colonies, has been set off by gains in-other directions, which we / may reasonably hope will ultimately prove of immense. advantage, and even tend to bring about a change in the views of the anti-preferential-ists themselves. In spite of the spread of information among the people of Great Britain concerning the colonies we are convinced that an immense amount of ignorance still prevails! The people as a whole have no conception at all of what the / colonies are. They know-/ nothing of their extent, of their resources, of their vast potentialities, of their marvellous progress and growth. ; ; Liverpool, , Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Dundee, Belfast, and Cork are to them concrete things—great cities with whose history, and trade, and characteristics they are familiar.'' ''But* the'"great j cities of the cojonies—Melbourne, I Sydney, Brisbane, Auckland, Wellington, Durban, Capetown, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec —are to them ■■ merely names, conjuring up nothing. Their v emoteness from the Mother Country leaves them /beyond the range of the common vision. Linked though- they are by means of cables and telegraph wires and v numerous steamships they are still too distant to affect the daily lives and thoughts' of the mass of the people. And while this condition of things exists it is almost hopeless to expect any change. It was no doubt his consciousness of this fact that led : Sir Joseph Ward to suggest cheaper cable rates arid 'a faster service of steamships. '■■■] With the unerring instinct of practical statesmanship,* he saw that the only hope of bringing the colonies closer to "the bosoms and businesses"' of the people of Great Britain lay in that, direction. And should his, suggestion be acteft upon, as seems likely, the Conference of 1907 will be; remembered as the starting-point of a new order of things. To bring New Zealand within: |a three weeks' voyage ;of the Mother Country, and to reduce the cost of cabling to sixpence a word, would completely revolutionise the relations of the two countries., The great object to be aimed at is to make -the colonies better known at Home. Once that is accomplished many of the difficulties which now stand in the way of >;complete understanding would disappear. And we believe that thing is. more likely to hasten this result than the establishment of faster steamship services and the cheapening of the cable rates. The latter alone would have ...an enormous effect. It would bring the colonies-"and; the Mother Country into social touch' and promote a close and friendly intercourse which could not fail to be productive of the / highest good. We earnestly hope therefore that Sir Joseph Ward's eminently practical suggestion will be followed by a strenuous effort to carry; it into effect. In other ways, too, the Conference has not been wholly fruitless, though the fruit may be some time yet before it ripens. The views of the colonies have been set forth with' a force and directness which must have deeply impressed the British public. That impression may in time fade, but something, will always remain. The colonies have been:talked about and written about from one end of the United Kingdom to the other, their desires;, and aspirations have been discussed by millions, their delegates have been listened to by thousands. Thought has been set going in multitudes of minds! All this is a distinct gain, although it may not i be '•; possible to estimate /■ its advantages by tangible results. These will come later.