EMPIRE IN WORLD AFFAIRS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19632, 28 October 1933, Page 17

EMPIRE IN WORLD AFFAIRS

VALUE OF NATIONAL CO-OPERATION INTERESTING REVIEW BY MR THOMAS British omclal Wireless (Received October 27, 5.5 p.m.) RUGBY, October 26. During a broadcast address upon the Empire in World Politics, the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, Mi- J. H. Thomas, said: "The cause of the peaceful co-operation between the nations has just received a -strong blow, but it was not a knock-out. The world can and will recover from it. How best can we help towards this recovery? World Co-operation. “World-wide co-operation,” added Mr Thomas, “is for the moment in great difficulties, but there is in the world a group of nations and peoples in the British Empire, covering between them more than a quarter of the earth’s surface, and including nearly a quarter of the human race, in which co-operation has not only not failed, but is living and growing. The relations between other nations and peoples are based fundamentally on the desire to avoid war. It is to that aim that almost the whole of their foreign policy is directed. It was with that object that the Leagile of Nations was created.

“The acts then of Governments,” said Mr Thomas, "are wise or foolish as they diminish or increase dangers of war. The Governments of the British Empire, on the contrary, start from the assumption that war between them is inconceivable. We can direct our energies to a positive end, achieving gocd, and not merely to the negative end of avoiding evil. Inspired by Selfless Ideals. "As the result,” the Minister concluded, “we can afford not merely in our relations with one another but in our relations with the rest of the world, to seek other than purely selfish ends. The real origin of this positive co-operation is the inherent love of personal liberty and self-government in races which make up the Empire. It is no mere chance that at the time when democratic government is rapidly disappearing elsewhere, within the British Empire it was never more firmly rooted than to-day. The nation which has yielded up its liberty must be kept drugged, and the easiest drug of all to administer is a strong dose of selfish national conceit. Democracy labours under no such necessity.” “ Real Hopeful Signs.” Mr Thomas expressed belief that Imperial co-operation explained the fact that relatively to the rest .of the world the British Commonwealth had suffered. less during the world economic crisis than had the other nations. There were real hopeful signs that the worst was past, and nowhere were those signs more noticeable than In the British Empire.