EMPIRE CONFERENCE “NOT WORTH WHILE”

Southland Times, Issue 23675, 25 November 1938, Page 5

EMPIRE CONFERENCE “NOT WORTH WHILE”

POSSIBILITY OF CANADIAN NEUTRALITY (Received November 24, 6.30 p.m.) MONTREAL, November 23. ’ Senator Wagriesbach, who has returned from Australia, told the Service Club that the British Commonwealth Relations Conference at Sydney was not worth while. He contended that several Canadian professors were chiefly occupied in a futile attempt to prove that Canada could be neutral when Britain was at war. “In the summer of 1922,” says J. A. Spender in his book “Great Britain,” “the British Government received a sharp reminder that the consent of the Dominions could not be taken for granted to any policy on which they had not been consulted. Issuing an appeal for help from the Dominions in the old confident way at the moment of the Chanak crisis, Mr Lloyd George was bluntly informed by Canada and South Africa that they had no intention of being drawn into another war. From this time onwards the principle that no Dominion could be committed to any policy called Imperial without the consent of its Parliament was tacitly accepted by British Governments. "The Locarno Treaties of 1926 were subject to the condition that none of the Dominions should be bound by them. When the Treaty of Lausanne was concluded with the Turks in 1923, Canada made her acceptance conditional on the right of her Parliament to decide of its own volition what obligations it should incur.” Dealing with the resolutions of Imperial conferences leading up to the Statute of Westminster, Spender says: “Under the Statute of Westminster the British Commonwealth is a League of Nations without sanctions. It is inherent in its Constitution that no member of it shall coerce any other. “The partners argued among themselves whether they could remain neutral in a war waged by Great Britain and yet remain in the partnership, but it was the unanimous opinion of foreign governments that the British Empire could not have it both ways. It was either a unity or it was not. In the former case its members could not have the privilege of membership in times of peace and the luxury of declaring themselves neutral when the unity was at war. Moreover, invaluable as their support had been in great emergencies, the defence of the Dominions and their security in peace rested almost entirely on the British Fleet.** ’