IMPERIAL COUNCIL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18295, 12 July 1921, Page 6

IMPERIAL COUNCIL

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NAME. MR E. O. MOCbLEY'S SUGGESTION, truoii Unit Uw.s (JouaEsi'ONDE.vr.; LONDON, May 9. In a recent letter ro Pirn 'limes, Professor Bcrneaale Keith, oi Jialmburga butveibtty, objected to tile term " 'imperial Uuuitt,” as incorrectly designating Uic approacning Conletetice, tor uic reason mu, Luo three belonging to wnai lie ululcrsLaiiiis as a Caoineu ate missing, Mr E. U. .uous-ey, tormcrly of rung s College, Auckland, who icce.ved a judicial appointment m me iwiudic East in lura, and is now in England on leave, has somcUimg to say on inis subject. lie ina-u----lains that Proleesor Keiui overlooks the tact that the qualifications fie reieis re were absent uu.n mo Imperial Wui Caomet. “Nor should any previous eigntlieation of. the term ‘caomet’ restrict it, troth being used'it found convenient aim necessary to rolled the larger nationhood and prerogatives the dominions have no,, assumed. "Uti me other hand,” Mr Mousley further says, "tne Imperial War Cabinet was an executive body tor purposes cl war, while the consultative institution silting s.multaticuusiy was the imperial War Conference, it has already been announced that the approaching assembly is to he consultative only, and dounile guarantees to this effect have recently been given to, their Ruriiamcnts by dominion I’ft me Ministers. Subject to ratification by the Dominion Parliaments, the task of the assembly will include that oi arranging preliminaries for the Constitutional Conference to take place later. ‘‘The Secretary of State for the Colonics informs us that the approaching Conterenco will ‘not ho like tho old Imperial Conferences, which were occasional and periodical institutions, but n meeting of the regular Imperial Cabinet of the British Empire.’ In this distinction Mr Churchill naturally did not include the fact, that the old Imperial Conferences were managed by the Colonial Office, and wore in fact presided over by the Colonial Secretary up to 1911, when tho Prime Minister became ex officio president. And not the least difference between the Imperial War Conference and the Imperial War Cabinet is that, while tho former was managed departmental ty by the Colonial Office and presided over by the Secretary of Stale for the Colonies, (he Imperial War Cabinet was directly attached to and piesided over by the Prime Minister himself—a distinction the importance of which no acquainted with the persistently recorded ■ policy of our selfgoverning dominions to exchange the Colonial Office for direct contact with the Prime Minister will fail to recognise. “But if the term ‘lmperial Conference’ is held to ignore the war additions to the nationhood of our dominions, and Mr Churchill’s ‘Regular Imperial Cabinet’ is anticipatory in that it suggests a permanent structure already erected. I submit that the term ‘lmperial Council’ would be at once truer and more useful”