HOPE FOR TO-MORROW.

Wairarapa Age, 24 December 1937, Page 5

HOPE FOR TO-MORROW.

A WORLD COMMONWEALTH. The first and critical step toward the realisation of an international commonwealth must be taken by two or more States which have carried the principle of the national commonwealth to its furthest expression: the fewer the easier, writes Mr. Lionel Curtis in the third and- latest volume of his “Civitas Dei.” It *would not matter how small the number might be, if the result was a genuine . international commonwealth. Clearly this step would be least difficult for national commonwealths with a common language, with similar constitutions, whose security already depend® on each other. I cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion, to which the reasoning followed in these pages has led, that in the world as now ordered, either Australia, New Zealand, or both, together with Great Britain are the countries best able to construct the first footbridge across the gulf 'in men’s which now prevents the world from passing from the national to the international commonwealth.' But of this I am sure: the initiative would have to come from Australia or New Zealand. I cannot resist the conclusion that one or other of these minor commonwealths holds, though it does not know it, a key to the door which, until it is opened, imprisons the whole of mankind.