THE IMPERIAL CONFERENCE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 144, 10 August 1911, Page 7

THE IMPERIAL CONFERENCE.

A SURVEY OF THE RESULTS

The Imperial Conference which has been silting in London came to an end on the eve of the Coronation. What has it achieved?

The “Westminster Gazette” imagines “an important logician” saying of the Conference and its results:— “ ‘Either your Dominions must bo one with you in policy and government or they will drift apart. Either they must accept your treaties and pledge themselves to your foreign policy or they are separate nations. Either they must contribute to one fleet under one direction or be ruled out of the defensive organisation of the Empire. There is no alternative, cries the logician; these third courses, which foolish politicians devise, arc more illusions concealing the truth.’ If ii'ii Oarr.inbus Conssni.

“Fortunately, a very different note was struck in tiie speeches with which Mr. Asquith and the otluff’ Prime Ministers wound up the Conference. The whole purpose of the Conference has been, as Mr. Asquith and Mr. Harcourt said, to establish closer co-operation between Governments which are, each of them ,free

nd autonomous—the third course bewtieix his ‘either’ and ‘or’ which the

impatient iogi'iau rules out. To everything decided at, the Conference there is an unspoken clause—‘if the Parliaments of the Dominions consent. ’

“The llocts of Australia and Canada will bo at the disposal of the Imperial Government in time of war, if the Parliaments of these Dominions consent. The Governments of the Dominions will support the policy of the Imperial Government, if their Parliaments consent. That'‘if’ id The great act of faith at the base of the British Empire. By admitting,, it, and only by admitting it, we have made the British Empire possible; by trusting to it, and only by trusting to it, we shall make the British Empire a serviceable unit in peace and war. There is no other way, and whether we are pessimists or optimists, wo have to accept it. We confess ourselves unashamedly optimists, and we believe the ungrudging acceptance of this ‘if’ to he a stronger guarantee not only of formal unity hut of effective united action than any legal bond or mechanical tie that could possibly be devised. A Common Mind.

“So, we think, it lias been proved it this Conference. The Prime Ministers one and all testified to the important progress that has been made, Mr. Fisher in particular declaring his belief that ‘this Conference will lay a foundation broader and safer than has hitherto boon the case.’ The Governments of the Dominions 'have for the first time been brought into counsel about the arcana imperii; the difficulties and points of danger have been laid before them, not with any peremptory demand for forced levies on their taxpayers, but with a friendly appeal for consideration and freewill assistance. That, as Lord Haldane said in his speech at the Na,'ional Liberal Club, has brought us a long way towards a common mind on the fundamentals on policy and from the common mind we shall gradually evolve,” concludes the “Westminster,” “a sure and trustworthy form of common action/’ Mr. Asquith’s Visw. The Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, speaking at the concluding sitting, said : “If 1 wore asked to define what had boon the dominant and governing feature of tiie Conference, I should say it has boon the attempt to promote and develop <. loser-co-operation through the old British institution of free end frark di-.i-.Da. I think yon will agree with me that the value of the Conference and its permanent results are not to be judged entirely —although in that respect it need not be afraid of comparison with any preceding body of tbo. kind—by the actual resolutions which it has affirmed and the proposals which it has adopted.

“Some of the most valuable, perhaps the most vain d>le, use to winch we have been able to put our time has been in the consideration of matte's which wo have deliberately abstained from coming to any, for the moment, definite conclusion upon. have cleared tho air, we have cleared the vround, wo have put to a better mu find understanding of our relative and reciprocal requirements. We see m truer perspective and proportion the bulk and dominance ol not a lew of our Imeprial problems, and that is a result which could never have been attained in any other way than by the assembling together of the 10sponsible statesmen of the different parts of i:iie Empire to hold a perfectly free interchange of opinion, each

presenting those aspects of the case with which he himself from his own local experience was exception ill* familiar. It is the bringing togotinr into the common stock, if I may say so, of all these various contributory elements of experience and knowledge which I think will make us all go back to our various tasks better eqiiippsd for their performance than we could possibly have been if we had not met here.

“I am perfectly certain, although many of you have come here at very great sacrifice of personal convenience, and possibly some detriment for the time being to the carrying on of public affairs in your own Dominions. I am satisfied there is not a man seated at this table who does not feel that those sacrifices were well worth while, and we shall all return to our respective spheres of duty with a stronger sense of our common obligations to tbs Empire, with a more complete confidence in one another, and with a more earnest determination to work together for the good of the whole.” Conference Critics. “Regarded as a gradually evolving institution, the germ of some form of political unity still in embryo, the Conference seems indeed—it must he confessed—to have reached a stage of arrested devdopment,’ says die “Morning Post.” “This meeting has been signalised—unless fuller information corrects me inference—by the abstraction from the Conference of a function which it was gradually and naturally beginning to assume. The discussion of foreign policy has been transferred, by a new precedent, from the Imperial Conference to the Committee of Imperial Defence, which heretofore had been concerned only with tecnnical aspects oi that subject not with the scheme of foreign relations underlying the strategic prob- '

“It can hardly be denied,” says the “Birmingham Post,” “that the proceedings of the 1911 Conference, so far as they are known, have been distinguished more by the emphasis they have laid upon the principle of Dominion autonomy than upon that of Imperial unity.” A Canadian View. “The dominant note in all the discussions was what the Colonial Secretary very justly described as ‘co-op-eration, not centralisation,’ ” writes in the “Nation” Dr. J. A. Macdonald, editor of the “Toronto Globe.” “The essential loyalty of the Dominions need not any longer be protested, but that hr,i.Tty is the loyalty of equals, and is offered not to tiie oldtime notion of Empire, but to the newborn ideal which has come in the vision of the English-speaking peoples, and which it is the high privilege of the British born nations to realise in historic fact. For the thing stirring in the national life of the British peoples, the word ‘Empire’ is a misnomer. • A new significance must be given to the old autocratic terminology. On the understanding that the Empire is not in very truth in Umpire, and ibai the King is not an Emperor, we are all of us glad and proud to be citizens of the British Empire and subjects of the King. “How new and strange the meaning is which is now being crowded Soto the old trims ‘Empire’ and ‘lmperialism,’ is illustrated by cue lights and privileges assumed and exercised by the representatives of the Dominions in this Imperial Conference. There is not one old notion of Empire, which has not suffered deliberate violence.” Dafii.'h nnci Australian Quito.--. The excellence of the butter made by the North Cw-i Co-ap.t.-ur. (. puny was striking!'-' t-xeiunlil’n-d in connection with !In* half-yearly m.-ca • ing of the shareholders of the Company on Thursday (says a Sydney paper). In the afternoon a case of “Unara” butter and a keg of Danish butter were placed in one of the rooms of the Byron Bay School of Art for the purpose of being sampled. The unanimous verdict was that the “Unara” butter was far sweeter and better than tbo Danish, although the latter was more heavily salted. Tbo Danish butter, although appearing firmer than our own district i redacts, on investigation proved to contain a higher percentage of moisture. Additional value was lent to the exbibiUon of the two specimens by tbo fact that tiie contents of the “Unara” case were made on Ttb February, shipped to London and returned: while the keg of Danish was made iu April, and shipped h v i to Australia I i oer ihc circums.cos it >s cause icr v. mu lor that Danish let-lies in I.ondon from Is to 7s per cwt. more than butter from Australia. Possibly the <;ocrct -/ s ivs Sydney paper) uay lie in hotter commercial methods.— Teat’s |ml it.