The New Zealand Times. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1923. DOMINION STATUS

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11652, 17 October 1923, Page 6

The New Zealand Times. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1923. DOMINION STATUS

Some anxiety has been expressed by many writers and speakers of late years about the “status” of the oversea dominions. When oversea representatives signed the Treaty of Versailles, some enterprising person jumped to an indiscreet conclusion. He said that the strokes of the pens which had written those signatures had conferred sovereign independence on the dominions represented by the signatures. He somewhat triumphantly called that the “new status.” In the confusion left by the war, increased as that confusion was by the hysteric references to the part played in it by the oversea dominions, there was a general move of the public belief overseas to agreement with this preposterous conclusion. Men who ought to have known better circled round the glass case in the New Zealand Parliamentary Library, with admiring eyes on the handsome pen therein enclosed—gloating, in fact, over one of the levers that had worked this great, sudden, constitutional change. In due course, the craze wore itself out, and for a time people were loath to believe in the possibility of its recurrence. Nevertheless, it did recur. It was in a milder way, hut the mildness was due to the camouflage of a fatally injurious theory. Deep down on the bedrock, the new view was anchored close to the anchor of the predecessor failure. At bottom the new view proved to he as full of disaster to the Empire as the old. This new view of the status was concerned with the power of the overseas to make treaties with countries outside the Empiro. That power was, of course, regarded as something quite within the privileges of the oversea dominions. Men argued in a loose way that, these young nations having grown up, ought to be allowed all the privileges of adolescence. At the first sight that naturally was taken to imply that the principle of autonomy must he subject in its application to the obvious limitation implied by the paramountcy of tho Imperial principles dominating all the Imperial, relations of all the States of the Empire. In this view this obvious limitation is the key to Imperial constitutional safety. No one took objection at first. But when Canada got making a foreign treaty with the United States, tho question arose of what would he tho position if one side or the other broke the treaty. It became soon evident that on this point there are two opinions. One holds that such situation is subject to the Imperial limitation aforementioned. Canada, for example, complaining, of course with reason, of a breach of her treaty with the United States, could not, on. the one hand,

go to war with the States, not being a sovereign Power, mid, on the other, could not claim military help from the rest of the Empire, which would not be in any way concerned in the dispute. This, of course, reduces the treaty-making power, of which Canada seems so proud, to what is, from the ambitious point of view—a farce. In consequence, the argument veered round to insistence oil the right of the oversea dominions to bind the whole Empire without any consultation or any obligation to prove community of interest. This insistence is, however, seriously upheld in various high places by some public speakere and writers, and mentioned by others with fear and trembling. Tills insistence and this fear are alike baseless. The one upholds and the other fears an absurdity. To imply that any member of any association -—whether Federal, Imperial, or of business compact—can compel the rest to support him in anything he chooses, whatever the consequences may be, is an inherent and transparent absurdity. The new “status” of the oversea, dominions does not invest any one of them with despotic power of compelling the others to accept the policy it dictates, with all the consequences, even of war. To think otherwise is to lose sight of the main governing fact that an association is an association. Associations have their definite nature, and are bound by definite principles. This, otherwise men would bind together for the purpose of vowed obedience to the behests of all and sundry. Obvious as this is, it seems to have escaped the notice of great writers, flourishing in great magazines. The ignorance of it even 6eems to have flustered great statesmen. This is serious, in the sense that there is really no limit to the vagaries of political ingenuity, a thing never daunted by fear of the “reductio ad absurdum.” Under the circumstances, there is only one way open to deal with the matter. It is for the Imperial Conference to decide the question, definitely, and once for all. The commonsense fact is that the States of the Empire cannot commit tlieir fellows to anything without their consent; that no treaties engaged in by any of the States are enforceable by the Empire or by the State concerned; that no State can sign any treaty Imperially, unless in a document containing the signatures of all the units of tho Empire. If a State is satisfied with the treaty power thus limited, good and well—that is the affair of that State. If a State is not so satisfied, the only course possible for that State is to leave the Empire and set up as a sovereign State on its own account.