The Christchurch Star SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1935. IMPERIAL VISION.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20541, 16 February 1935, Page 10

The Christchurch Star

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1935. IMPERIAL VISION.

PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd

«T VENTURED to dream a dream, said Lord Rosebery twenty-four years ago in a speech, part of which was recalled at the opening of the Imperial Press Conference in Cape Town this month. Yet in his vision he probably did not foresee that words spoken then, m 1909, would have remarkable significance in 1935. The Earl of Clarendon on this occasion remarked that Lord Rosebery’s description of the first conference as being of greater importance than gatherings of Prime Ministers and his reference to transient statesmen and a permanent Press were as true now as then. But Lord Rosebery’s speech, or rather his dream, is worth recalling in fuller detail. He said:

Thinking of that vast Armada, the surplus of which is so constantlv scrapped at what seem so wholly- im prices to the taxpayer. I could Of th P ; masin ' n .K “»* admirably some large sh, PS might be used, not lor the purposes of war but for the SjPg- «* P— I thought to my. events -n 1J Were the of Parbineor ? country, I should like years tl° V ° te , supplies for two or four ol Pa , Ck ,tself U P in three or four of these obsolete warships and go for a trip m order to find out some thmg about the Empire. You may obl?. a ‘ once to m y scheme, and say ." h ?" c ° u!d the country be govwhl !®, the Ministers were absent?” Wlth confidence that the people would be governed much as they are partanents‘k 6 h “* ° f S

BiU the good seed of those words still hes dormant in the soil, for apart from Mr L. C. M. S. Amery, none of the Cabinet Ministers and few members of the House of Commons have visited New Zealand, not at least in their official capacity. Mr Ramsay MacDonald was here in his pre-Parliamen tary days, and his son and daughter visited these shores recently, but these tours were undertaken more or less as a contribution to their adult education. Yet that, of course, is a very good reason, even sufficient argument for requisitioning warships and bundling all the members of the Houses at Westminster on an educational tour of the Empire. For unfortunately many of them know more about the Balkans than they do about New Zealand. In these days of quotas, Imperial sentiment will be merely cloudpuffs on the mountain unless it is the sincere expression of thorough knowledge and understanding. The question of economic relations was already troubling Lord Rosebery at that first conference. Looking down the list of topics to be dealt with he saw with relief that tariff reform was not included, for he understood that it should be a peaceful conference. But even if every parliament in everv country in the Empire paid a round of visits, there still remain the large numbers of the people of those countries who can only travel through their minds. They know the Empire through books and the newspapers, especially the newspapers, which provide their daily reading. And in the words of Lord Rosebery again: “If you are to build up the Empire you can only do it by the freest knowledge of each other’s wants and ideas.”

THE CRIME OF BLACKMAIL. can be said in extenuation of blackmail. It is, as was emphasised by a judge at Auckland yesterday, a peculiarly vicious and cruel offence. Blackmailers, having once got a victim in their clutches, rely on threats of exposure to prevent him from seeking the protection of the law, and the first payment of hush money is usually followed by further extortionate demands and brutal menaces until the man or woman affected is left a penniless and tortured wreck. Blackmail by well-organised gangs became so prevalent in England a few years ago that a special department was set up at Scotland Yard to cope with it, and now the crime, thanks to salutary sentences, has almost been stamped out. One factor is the consideration extended by the courts to a complainant. Judges have discretionary’ power to protect witnesses, and almost invariably in blackmail cases the name of the victim is suppressed.