Dominions’ Relations With Western Union Seen as Major Issue

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26792, 8 June 1948, Page 5

Dominions’ Relations With Western Union Seen as Major Issue

New Zealand Press Association Special Correspondent. Rec. 9 p.m. LONDON, June 7. Little news is available on any decisive plans for a meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers, but suggestions have been made that Mr Hugh Dalton may be placed in charge of arrangements by Mr Attlee. One theory is that two conferences might be held—first, a brief discussion by the Prime Ministers on the immediate issue of the Western Union followed by another and more elaborately prepared meeting to discuss constitutional problems raised by post-war developments in the Commonwealth, particularly in India and Pakistan. Some interesting comments on Commonwealth politics have been made by the weekly, journal, the New Statesman and Nation, in a leading article. It declares that the project of a conference is a belated victory for the informed section of public opinion. After several opportune occasions for a conference since the war had come and gone, it began to look as if such an institution was defunct.

The article continues that it was not until the project of the Western Union brought certain latent Commonwealth problems to a head that opinion in Britain, and some of the dominions, became vocal and that governments felt themselves obliged to respond. Powerful antagonists to such a conference, the journal declares, were officials who dislike big Ministerial gatherings. Official inertia has been a valuable ally of political objections in some of the dominions. In this respect, it suggests that both Canada and South Africa have been cautious, Dr H. V. Evatt seemed more ready to have the Commonwealth conform to the Australian policy than Australia conform to the Commonwealth policy, and accordingly has been well content to rest upon such devices as the Australia-New Zealand agreement, and the Canberra conference on Pacific issues, on which Australia could exercise her natural regional paramountcy. New Zealand has not exerted much influence one way or the other. India and Pakistan have been preoccupied with their own difficulties. Statesmanship of the first order will be required to overcome such inhibitions, the New Statesman and Nation continues, and on the side of statesmanship will be the urgency of the issues that have to be settled. The Commonwealth policy, it declares, if it is to stay in the same race with European policy, has to run fast to keep up. It is already a lap behind. “ Basically, the problem is one rather for the dominions than for Britain ” it says. “We in . these islands cannot escape belonging to Europe. We have neither the predominant strength nor the geographical isolation to remain outside the Western European concert , . . for us there is really no choice. The choice, if it exists, is one rather for the dominions to make.' ’ “Are they prepared to come with us into the circle of the Western Powers, recognising that fundamental interest, as well as imperial ties commit them anyway to the consequences of what transpires in Europe in future just as is did in 1914 and 1939? Or will they take a chance on being capable to decide in time and effectively when a still more critical moment comes later —recognising that such policy weakens the Commonwealth in the same measure as it enlarged their own apparent independence? Statesmanship may suggest one answer—national politics may dictate another. “It is long odds that a Commonwealth conference in its public pronouncements will seek some formula which will avoid presenting the issue in its naked simplicity. But Ministers and their advisers cannot evade decisions on many points where the pressure of events will decide for them if they do not decide for themselves. The journal adds that the problem of Commonwealth defence is rapidly approaching such a crisis.. Important decisions have to be taken now and they must depend to some extent on the contribution which the dominions are ready to make to general security. Similarly, decisions about trade and finance cannot be indefinitely postponed or camouflaged, nor can those on constitutional problems which involve the whole trend of the Commonwealth changing into an association of independent states because of no common allegiance. Is there to be a proper dominions’ conference in 1948 or a kind of Imperial relay race, asks the Daily Mail. The newspaper added that, if the dominions’ Premiers- arrive at different times and what they discuss is not agreed until later, the conversations might as well have been held over long-distance telephone. The Daily Mail said the critical days of 1948 called for a clear-cut conference. “ Since 1945 there have been far-reaching changes in India, Burma. Ceylon. Egypt and Palestine. Now under the Nationalists, South Africa of course is bound to be altered, if only slightly at first. These matters alone are worthy of discussion at a full-scale Imperial Conference.”