Outer Realm Pays Homage

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22725, 11 May 1937, Page 20 (Supplement)

Outer Realm Pays Homage

IT was at the diamond jubilee celebrations of Queen Victoria, 1897, that the first great pageant of Empire was seen. All the Dominions, dependencies, principalities, Crown Colonies and Protectorates were represented. Never before had it been possible for British people, whether they lived in the Motherland or in the outer Realm, to so vividly realise the amazing composition of the Empire, the diversity of its peoples, the contrasts they show in origin, language, religion, law and custom and the range of methods of administration and general government. Then arose, says one commentator, the conception of the interdependence of the Empire, of unity in diversity with the Crown as the keystone binding together the whole fabric, in which peoples' so opposite dwell—black men, yellow men, red men, white men —and tending at least to soothe the prejudices of colour, and the conflict of different civilisations by participation in a common British citizenship. To the peoples of the Indian Empire, the only thing understandable in our Constitution is

their Emperor. There are millions of people of native races in the subject Colonies and Protectorates who have never heard of Cabinet, or Prime Minister, or Parliament, or, if they have, find it hard to grasp intelligently what it implies. But the King they can understand. He is the centre of their life. They know that there protection and security lies with him. So they look up to him with homage and devotion. For no symbol of Imperial authority but the Kingship could they have the feeling which we call allegiance. And, in the last resort a subject in any of the Colonies or Dominions asks for justice of the King in person through his Privy Council. All appeals from the Courts of the Dominions are heard by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Kingship, in a word, makes the British Empire one and indivisible. At the Imperial Conference held in London in November, 1926, it was declared by the Prime

Ministers of the Dominions that the group of self-governing communities composed of Great Britain, the Irish Free State, and the Overseas Dominions were "equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of . Nations." The more the constitutional ties between the Dominions and the Mother Country have been relaxed by the action of the Dominions in enlarging each its own independence, the more uniting the Crown has become. . In the address which the Dominion Prime Ministers presented to King George V. on the conclusion of their labours— "knowing Your Majesty's deep interest in all that touches your people's happiness"—they well expressed the height and depth of the affectionate esteem in which he is held by our kith and kin across the

seas. "We have been conscious," they said, "throughout our deliberations, of a unanimous conviction that the most essential of the links that bind our widely-spread peoples is the Crown, and it is our determination that no changes in our status as peoples or as Governments shall weaken our common allegiance to the Empire and its Sovereign. To this emphatic declaration of loyalty the King made a fine reply. Where, he asked, could one find such ample testimony to their-common allegiance to the Empire and its Sovereign as in their noble self-sacrifice during four-and-a-half years of the World War? The Monarchy keeps to the front the common blood relationship. It encourages also closer between the separate self-governing communities for mutual benefit. The dissolution of the Monarchy would probably mean that the British Empire would fall to pieces. General Smuts, the South African statesman, speaking in London in 1917, of the influence of the hereditary Kingship in keeping together the British Empire, said "You cannot make a Republic of the British Commonwealth of Nations."