DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 88, Issue 13575, 1 September 1917, Page 4

DAY BY DAY.

In the course of a remarkable speech, at once racy and proAn found. General Smuts Insoluble lately made timely alProblom lusion to the antimonarchic fallacies recently put forward by .Air H. G. Wells and other crochetty "theorists. Himself tormerly a citizen of a republic, constrained to come under the British Crown, he told his hearers that the hereditary kingship was a most potent factor in relation to the solidarity of tiie Empire. He emphasised the impracticability (apart from any other considerations) of trying to make a re. public of the British commonwealth of nations. "If you had to elect a President, he would have to be a President not only here in these islands, but all over the British Empire— ; n India, and in the Dominions—the President who would be really representative of all these peoples; and here you would be facing an absolutely insoluble problem. The theory of the Constitution is that the King is not your King, but the King of all of us, ruling every part of the whole commonwealth of the nations of the Empire; and if his place should be taken by anybody else then that somebody will have to be elected under a process which will pass the wit of man to devise. Let us be thankful for mercies. We ha* e a kingdom here which is really not very different from a hereditary republic."