THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20917, 6 January 1930, Page 7

THE BRITISH EMPIRE

GENERAL SMUTS’S SPEECH. CLOSER CO-OPERATION URGED. WORDS OF PRAISE FROM FORMER • ENEMY. (British Official Wireless.) - (United Press Association.) (By Electric Telegraph -Copyrlßbt.) - RUGBY, January 4. (Received Jan. 5, at 5.5 p.m.) General Smuts, of South Africa, made a remarkable speech on the British Empire at a luncheon given by the Canadian Club -at Montreal. He said he felt it was a.unique characteristic of the Empire that it had given scope and offered opportunities to small peoples as no empire °f the past had even done. The British'Empire had deliberately set itself to encourage a- variety of types and initiations and to procure an interwoven pattern in which scope was left for every kind of diversity. For the smaller peoples there could be no better or more beneficent system. He held that they should -be-foremost in preserving themselves as a guarantee for liberties and privileges such as they could secure by no oUier agency. He claimed.that- the Empire had served as a working model for the League of Nations, and Expressed the belief that the existence of the Empire was the best augury for the permanent success of the League, which was achieving invaluable results. Continuing, General Smuts said that the, last 10 years had been spent ,in elaborating the status of the dominions and securing for them constitutional equality with the Mother Country. The help and goodwill of British statesmen of all parties had always been available. This achievement, however, was only half the battle, and he urged that the next 10 years might be given over with the same real to the achievement of closer cooperation and real solidarity in policy. He made this plea as a man who had given some of the best years of his life in fighting to escape from the British flag, and he spoke as no lover of Imperialism as a doctrine, but he felt that the British Empire was an institution of a unique type and of inestimable value, and that its citizens would show little evidence of political sagacity and foresight if they did not hand it on undimmed in vigour to their children, so that it might play an even more. bene-, ficent part in the world’s affairs than it had already done.