THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1926. THE IMPERIAL CONFERENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19495, 26 November 1926, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1926. THE IMPERIAL CONFERENCE.

.■ . » Any attempt to weigh the, results of the Imperial Conference must seek first to discover the spirit in which its deliberations were conducted. It was primarily a family council. Though it had to discuss matters of business, its members did not assemble to make commercial bargains. Laws were much in their' thought, but it was not theirs to promulgate them. Rather, as representatives of the British peoples having homes widely scattered through the earth, they came together to talk over things of vital and urgent interest to them as such. That it was a family gathering did not give any assurance of agreement. Indeed, that very fact held possibilities of discord, for intimacy multiplies points of contact and confers the luxury of unrestrained speech. On the part of many, its summoning was viewed with trepidation. In some of the Dominions were mutterings about "autonomy," and in the conference itself were men prone to speak on occasion as if they desired nothing so much as to cut the Imperial moorings of their particular ships of state. The best that was hoped in some pessimistic forecasts was the tacit ignoring of the issues threatening to be divisive, a skating hurriedly over the thin ice of constitutional relations to the less precarious footing of reciprocity in trade and co-operation in Empire settlement schemes. The conference has been held. The perilous issues have been frankly discussed for many days. An agreement has been reached that satisfies Mr. Mackenzie King and General Hertzog without alarming in the slightest degree either Mr. Bruce ,or Mr. Coates, and Mr. Baldwin is as happy as a schoolboy. The conference has closed with "hands all round." What is described as a new spirit has marked its sessions. This alone is an achievement far exceeding all the closely-worded resolutions it has put on record. The family feeling has been . strengthened. Foreign observers who had prophesied that the Empire was breaking up—their wish the father to their thought—have been confounded. What matters most to the Empire's future, the cementing of its national kinship, has been splendidly accomplished. Were there nothing else to chronicle, this alone would stamp the conference as a magnificent success.

But there is more. In the furnishing of means to embody this family affection a great deal has been done. In the British newspaper comment on the decisions reached on constitutional questions there appears a tendency to belittle those decisions as merely declaratory of existent facts. It is true that no startling departures have been made. No new constitutional instrument has been fashioned. All that has happened may be included under the long-familiar heading of "ways in which the Crown is tendered advice." That is the formula, however, for all British progress in popular government, since the earliest days of Parliamentary rule. Even Mr. Baldwin, as Britain's Prime Minister, stands on no other footing, and the whole Cabinet system, at home £nd abroad, rests on it. It is at least as secure a basis as any written constitution, however elaborately defined, has proved to be. To look for change by way of documents setting out new powers and privileges is a mistake. There has been a gradual evolution in Imperial affairs- of State. Elasticity, not rigidity, has been the rule. This method may admit misunderstanding, as even a written constitution certainly does when diverse legal minds approach it critically, and there has been a need to face some doubts and settle them. This the conference has done in a very convincing way. To some British observers the need may not have been evident but in some of the Dominions it has been more or less acute. The air has been cleared. The relationship of the Dominions to the Mother Country and to each other has been enlighteningly discussed. In some particulars, such as the functions of a Governor-General and the cooperation of the Empire's units in framing foreign policy, there has been issued a declaration of practical value. There will be less room for misconception and restiveness in the nation's outer marches — a gain that will be appreciated there, although it may seem slight to those in the Homeland who are versed in British constitutional development. These things are of great practical moment. Some earlier conferences were disappointing because they contributed little to the Empire's selfrealisation. For their participants they were interesting enough, but they left a feeling that they lost their value by devotion to trifling issues. This conference, through its series of close sub-committee discussions of practically every phase of Imperial relations, has done infinitely better.

In many respects it has necessarily left details of co-operation to be settled by the oversea Parliaments. This has been inevitable. It was obviously impossible for their Prime Ministers to bind their Governments offhand to projects with whose bearings and details they had little or no previous acquaintance. They went, in part, to gain knowledge of the British Government's mind, and were themselves possessed of diverse points of view. The merit of the conference consisted in its being a conference, not a meeting of clashing policies already crystallised. The British Government itself was under necessity to hear the views of others. This being so, the findings go quite as far as could have been reasonably expected. The official summary gives them very general expression. Room is left to read between the lines. But it will be found, when the full text of the resolutions is available, that room is still left for

the various Governments to write between the lines. On the momentous subject of defence, for example, a lead has been given. Co-operation in military, naval and air forces is suggested in certain broad respects, but it remains for the respective Governments to give this precise effect. It is so also with the improvement of communications. For financial reasons, if for no other, this limit to the scope of the recommendations is inevitable. Through the whole range of questions the same necessity runs. The results of the conference cannot be fully measured until there has elapsed time sufficient to allow of their practical discussion on the Prime Ministers' submission of them in their respective Parliaments. That they are charged with Iwghly important Imperial missions, the outcome of agreement reached after absolutely frank discussion in the Empire's family circle, is nevertheless so evident that this conference is seen fco be the most fruitful of the series that began almost casually forty years ago.