IMPERIAL UNITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18197, 16 September 1922, Page 1 (Supplement)

IMPERIAL UNITY.

BY NIKOEA.

A NEW CONCEPTION.

" It is very good of you New Zealanders to come to fight for us," said an English hostess during tho war period.

" But we came to fight for ourselves — where would New Zealand be if the war is lost?" was the reply. Tliis conversation revealed attitudes of mind common in Britain and in New Zealand before tho war. In Britain there were among the educated, many people who had no appreciation of tho Imperial fabric. The Dominions conveyed small idea of Empire. They were distant countries, which catered for tho restless, the traveller, the man who vould not or, through economic stress, could not stay at homo. India, of course, aroused peculiar, ard often personal, interest. Glamour and romance hung around it, and thousands upon thousands of men, in the army and tho civil service, there lived lives of high purpose, and sometimes of adventure, which brought out the finest traits in the patriotic British character. After their work was ended they returned to Britain. Communities woro permeated with tho Anglo-Indian, who became a typo held in high regard, honoured as the power behind the British rule of millions. But tho colonial possessions of Britain lacked tho glamour. From them men did not come home to their retirement. Writers, failing to find in the colonies the colour and charm of that vast country of the alluring East, or the picturesquo life of Englishmen in India, were unable to print as clean a picture upon the imagination of the Homeland, and knowledge of them was not universally spread. It was not surprising, therefore, that even after immigration had become more or less systematised, after tho Dominions had developed substantial trade with Britain, that large numbers of the people of Britain, who had not the excuse of the uneducated, lacked a true vision of tho Empire, its inter-relations, and its growth. Self-Centred Dominions. On the other hand there was in the Dominion, notwithstanding patriotic instincts, a very narrow Empire sense. Peace, broken only by the South African war, had endured for so many decades, that there was a strong tendency to become self-centred and absorbed in the comparative trivialities of the day. There was almost an attitude of indifference in regard to Empire relationships. In New Zealand even the gift of the battleship failed to create in the mind of tho public the family idea of the Empire. If one mistakes not there was a strong cock-a-hoop feeling. We were very pleased with ourselves, and we wanted to be told that we were rather wonderful people. We showed our paces most proudly, with small thought of the race to be run sooner or later. Not that New Zealand did not possess men who saw beyond the incident a wonderful vision, and dreamed dreams which were not imagined by the crowd. But who will deny the existence of the almost profane thought in the mind of the crowd, that England, after all, was growing a bit old and wanted cheering up?

A New Outlook. .. Then came tho war, the common effort and sacrifice, the victory, and a new sense of Empire. The words quoted at the outset of this article, which wero typical of many a conversation, would not now be spoken, for a change has taken place in a common attitude of mind. Although selfgoverning Dominions, through their spokesmen, once in the flush of victory claimed rights which could not be, although through their Parliaments they have, so far, failed to bear their full share of tho burden of naval protection, although domestic problems are allowed to grow to such proportions that the more distant matters of Imperial moment are often obscured, there is a new Imperial sentiment in the Dominions, and, judging by the utterances and actions in tho Mother of Parliaments, a new outlook at Home.

One of the outstanding evidences of the new attitude in Britain is the oversea settlement scheme. The point of consequeneo is that Britain is prepared to spend £3,000,000 a year towards the establishment of emigrants in the Dominions. It. might be argued that the reason is that there are enormous numbers of unemployed —and that may have a bearing upon the decision. But beyond any aim of practical politics there is clear evidence of a new conception of Imperial unity. Tha Empire family idea is flourishing upon the devastations of war. The distribution of good British stock over the far-flung territories of the Empire is the aim. The Dominion, resident no longer is regarded as the distant cousin, who sometimes writes home, but a member of the family, who carries the personal interest of ali his kin as he travels the new-turned furrow. Tho emigrant no longer is to be regarded as the restless soul who " goes to find out," but the brother, in the back country, working for a common'end. Members ol the Family The voice of the Dominions in this movement is the friendly voice of a kinsman. Unfortunately, discordent tones are heard, but they are merely mistakes. Those who speak of the people show, in many ways, what the body of the people think. There -we have a statesman telling in legal pharaseology that New Zealand is well content that the Mother Country, in international affairs, should speak for the wholo Empire. Here we find a Bill making New Zealand practise, in a small matter of jurisdiction in ' territorial waters, conform to British law, simply because Britain has been having a disagreement with a foreign country which used the Dominion law as an argument. Again we have an amendment in our law regarding the enforcement of judgments of courts of the United Kingdom and other Dominions, in compliance with a promise made to the Imperial Government. Eloquent of Freedom. And in Britain the Lord Chancellor, speaking of the ultimate Court of Appeal in the Empire—the Judicial Committee of 'the Privy Council—thus gives expression to a sentiment which lies near to the heart of this Empire which is learning to know itself. "I hope that that great bond of Empire which is honoured by the English common law may long be maintained unimpaired. The decision is not for us. It is for the Dominions. Our attitude has been, and must continue to ...be, that as long as we constitute a Court which is worthy of the Empire, which can render a useful service in the Dominions, so long shall wo have for the discharge of those duties the most learned judges that we possess, and if ever the moment should come—l hope it will be remote—when another view prevailed, and it was thought that these matters might bo dealt with in the final appellate state in the Dominions, we should acquiesce—readily acquiesce—but with the feeling that an interesting and valuable page in the history. of the consolidation df the British Empire had been closed, and perhaps closed for ffw.