OVERSEAS CLUB.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 93, 19 April 1912, Page 3

OVERSEAS CLUB.

SPEECH BY THE GOVERNOR. tPor Press Association.} Auckland, April 18. The part of the scattered British Dominions in increasing and maintaining the unity ot the Empire war strikingly dealt with by the Governor, when he opened a branch of the Overseas Club jn Auckland to-day. He said that, although the Overseas Club movement was only 20 months’ old, it had met with such a popular reception that its future success was assured. New Zealand and other Dominions were growing into a real sense of nationality, and this had a deterrent effect upon the concentration of the interests of the people upon the wider outside subjects of the •Imperial interests. ft was said by some who were pessimistic that the Empire was so immense and diffused that it was almost beyond hope to keep it together indefinitely as an intact unity. This internal increase of nationality was a matter that could best lie dealt with by such an organisation as the Overseas Club. There was an old-fashioned idea that a distant Dominion could, during its years of development, enjoy privileges of fatherly shelter and protection by the Old Country, and then, when it was able to walk and advance itself, could throw oil’ that protection and go independently. That view had now practically been exploded. The Overseas Club could advance and strengthen the growing opinion that the Dominions could not do without the strength and mutual cohesion of the Empire. (Applause.) New Zealand and the other countries could no longer look to Britain as their sure and ■sole means of security and protection, but neither could they, as individual units, look to themselves by themselves as a body to be able to fight against the dangers that could be found throughout the world. What the Dominions could do was by joining together, and by consolidation to present /such a front to the world that the combination would be irresistible in its force, and would be the greatest factor in the peace of the world. While the organisation of the Empire presented many difficulties they were perhaps not so great as many might think. "With a certain amount of clear thinking on the part of the public they would see that an organic system of Empire was perfectly possible. The difficulties that were seen must be explained at every the Overseas Club. He believed an organic Empire, in the future was perfectly compatible with the freedom of the Dominions’ autonomy throughout the Empire. They must rely to some extent upon leading statesmen meeting in conference to come to certain decisions, but he believed that if they were to see an organic Empire it would be brought about on much more solid foundations as the result of public education through the whole question being thrashed out by the democracies, which would come to a final decision, by themselves. However skilled or eminent a conference of statesmen might be, its decision would not be of any real and lasting good if those making it were allowed to go very far ahead of the public education. People must be brought up very close in knowledge to the decisions to be made. There again, the Overseas Club could do incalculable good.