MR. AMERY'S CREED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19807, 30 November 1927, Page 10

MR. AMERY'S CREED.

Acknowledging the honour paid and the goodwill shown him by the participants in the State luncheon, Mr. Amery turned the occasion to good account by his lucid and impressive review of the Empire—reborn at the last Imperial Conference. His high estimate of what was then done is unmistakable. He does not hold with those who saw nothing but the framing of a constitutional formula descriptive of an established condition of affairs. It is true that the formula did not create a new order. That was already far advanced. But the frank and full enunciation of the fact was in itself an achievement of importance. It gave to the Empire's history one of its most dramatic moments. On the basis of this event Mr. Amery builds his belief in the mission he is now fulfilling. It. was a pronouncement of equality of status among the Empire's selfgoverning units. That being so, the old regime, in which Downing Street was entitled to dictate in any considerable degree to the Dominions, is admittedly outgrown. Yet Britain is still capable of a leadership that is essential to the Empire's welfare and progress as a whole. The Colonial Office, in its service to the Empire, must therefore function in a new way in relation to the Dominions. ' It must make ways of consultation with them, even to the extent of going among them in search for their opinions and in promotion of their co-operation, with the Homeland. There in brief is tho raison d'etre of Mr. Amery's tour, of his presence in New Zealand, of his confidential speech with its legislators, of his intercourse with all classes of its people. He is Downing Street abroad All that he has so far said, all that he may still have to say, centres in the fact that such a tour as his is the corollary and complement of the doctrine enunciated by the last Imperial Conference. If these units of the Empire, "each organised as a separate community, each free to act according to its own judgment," are to work in co-opera-tive loyalty to the whole that they compose, there must 1m; multiplied in every possible way points of personal contact among them. Mr. Amery, in this illuminating speech, has made his confession of faith. Tt remains for this Dominion, among others, to espouse it, with the same wise enthusiasm and give it full embodiment. in deeds. For this, as he well knows, it has the mind and will.