LABOUR AND EMPIRE.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19009, 9 May 1924, Page 9

LABOUR AND EMPIRE.

COLONIAL SECRETARY ENTERTAINED. STATUS OF HIGH COMMISSIONERS. A GRIEVANCE TO BE REMOVED LONDON, March 3. At the dinner given by the Canada Club to Mr J. H. Thomas (Secretary of State for the Colonies), the old Question of the High Commissioners’ status was referred to. Sir Hamar Greenwood, who presided, said that there was a long-standing grievance felt by the dominions and the Empire of India. At present the High Commisioners of the dominions and India had no status or precedence in the Mother Country. At any great official gathering the High Commissioners, including the representatives of Southern Ireland, would be at the very tail-end of the queue with a thousand at least preceding them in the order of precedence. They would come a long way after the Masters in Lunacy, and would b<i so far behind the Minister for the Liberuian Republic that they could not. see him.— (Laughter). The present precedence was settled at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, before there were dominions. Not only were the Commissioners unfairly treated, but there was something approaching humiliation in the present, attitude towards the millions of self-governing people in the dominions and in India. He appealed to their guest to remedy the wrong. Mr Thomas said that the chairman had taken an opportunity of ventilating a grievance which he said had existed in 1815. What the chairman really meant was that hitherto the people of this country had not been sufficiently intelligent to appreciate all that the Empire meant, but that now- they had got someone who was really intelligent they could appeal with confidence to him to its being removed. —(Laughter). They appealed to someone who was well versed in the affairs of social etiquette and knowing how important this question of etiquette was. he could assure them that he was dealing with it already.— (Cheers). He did not create either the C.B.E. or the 0.8. E., each member of which got what he deserved.— (Laughter). He was satisfied that there was no legitimate reason why the High Commissioners of Canada and the other dominions should be punished for the sins of other people. It was in that spirit that he would deal with the situation.— (Cheers). The real way to approach these difficulties and differences was by contact with one another. He said quite frankly that this greivanee of so long ago, like so many of the other grievances of centuries, was being removed in six weeks by a Labour Government. — (Cheers). The bankers who were fully represented there, had apparently como to express their approval of Labour's capital levy policy.— (Laughter). The general managers of the railways were present to demonstrate not only their appreciation of his past services to them, but their hope that nothing unforseen would happen to prevent him from continuing in his present job and not bothering them. — (Laughter). SOMETHING TO APPRECIATE It could not be too strongly emphasised that the great change in Government, that for the first time found a new party in office, a party composed of men of humble birth and meagre education, had been brought about by the existence of common sense through the ballot-box, and not by evolution,, as might have been the ease in any other country. The change meant that the Labour Party could never again return to the old situation, and he was not sure that this was fully appreciated. “You cannot,” he proceeded, “have men assuming the reins of Government, brought face to face with the grave responsibility of determining the defences of an Empire like ours, brought into contact daily and hourly with the facts and realities of government and all that it means—you can never again drive those men back to the mere propaganda stage. Therefore, I put it to you that it is not something we ought to deplore, but something we ought to appeciate, because either for good or for ill, and I believe it will be for good, however much people may disagree with us, however keen my friend Churchill may be to find himself back in the House of Commons, helping to serve the Empire—he and others will realise when the time comes for us to give up the reins of office that we have not only been not unmindful of our responsibility, but we have done nothing to weaken the prestige and position of the great Empire of which we are all proud.” GREATEST FACTOR FOR PEACE. This Empire, Mr Thomas proceeded, was to-day, and he hoped would ever remain, the greatest factor for peace that the world knew. “Let us take an example. There is, let us say, a difference with Australia, with Canada, with New Zealand, with South Africa. What man in our country, whatever his class or creed or polities,, would dare to suggest for a moment that because of these differences of a temporary character we should add one copper to the armaments of our country? No, we say, and we let it be known to the world that our Constitution and this citizenship in this great commonwealth of nations are so strong and solid and binding that whatever the differences may be, we never attempt or conceive the idea of settling them by the arbitrament of the sword. Therefore, by what we are doing among ourselves we are creating an example to the world in the same way that we hope and believe the League of Nations will do for the world what we do between ourselves.” IRELAND’S PROBLEMS. Mr. Thomas, in a reference to Ireland, said that during the last two || years we had added another nation Ito our great commonwealth of nations. In Ireland we had healed a breach of long standing, and cemented the friendship between the two peoples; but just as we had surreni| dered our claim to the government | of the Irish Free State, so the Irish I people had acepted the same condiI tions as the Canadians. The speaker addedc “Speaking for my | Government, I say to you and to the I country that we accept the Irish | Treaty both in spirit and letter, and ■. desire to give full effect to it.— | (Cheers). Anyone who has visited J Ireland, anyone wbo has followed the j Irish problem, and who knows any-

thing of the situation must be well aware that the difficulties between north and south can never be settled permanently and satisfactorily by an outside body. No one who has given any thought to the subject can assume that the real solution of the Irish problem is in the partition of Ireland,, and it is because I feel that this would not be a solution, because I believe it will not be the ultimate end of the question, I am one of those, who hope this one outstanding question wil not be settled by an outside authority with bitterness and feeling and differences, but will be settled by Irishmen themselves sitting round the table, and saying’: ‘We are the best judges of our own difficulties; we can best solve our own problem.”

Sir James Allen was one of the guests at the dinner.