IMPERIAL AFFAIRS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18876, 31 May 1923, Page 7

IMPERIAL AFFAIRS

DRITAIN AND DOMINIONS. MACHINERY FOR CONSULTATION. PRESENT SYSTEM DEFECTIVE. Press Association —By Telegraph— Copyright LONDON, May 29. The Round Table, in referring to the Imperial Conference, discusses the defects iu the present system of consultation between the dominions and the Mother Country, and asks how it could be made more effective and more real.' The writer says: “Owing to the fact that the High Cmmissioners are overburdened with work of a commercial and consular character, and the Governor-Generals are not specially selected because of their ability to inform the Colonial Office about political opinion in their dominions, the mechanism for mutual information between the dominions and Great Britain is less effective than that between Britain and foreign countries. The Foreign Office conducts its business in almost total ignorance about the opinion of the dominions.” The Round Table considers that a system of Imperial co-operation would work smoothly only if the Commonwealth of the British Nations adopted a quasidiplomatic system, and men of the same character as Ambassadors were appointed to specialise in political and economic observation, while they were dissociated from controversial politics. Ouch men could give their Governments knowledge, and if any dominion- Government disapproved of any phase of foreign policy it could dissent in time and get the policy modified or the matter ventilated in Parliament.

“We would welcome,” says the paper, “increasing activity by the dominion Governments in international affairs, provider that the machinery for consultation is also perfected. At present Great Britain is left to carry the international burden alone. The Empire prides itself on having led the world along the road of individual freedom by creating the first commonwealth, where law and government are made amenable to popular control. Are we going to lead it along the road to peace by proving that nations can also find freedom in constitutional unity under a reign of law which they themselves control?”—A. and N.Z. Cable.