EMPIRE'S FUTURE.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15894, 19 January 1924, Page 8

EMPIRE'S FUTURE.

LORD BALFOUR Ott TREATIES. BIRKBECK CENTENARY. In connection with the centenary celebrations, Lord Balfonr addressed the students of the Birkbeck (University of London) on "Current Topics." Mr E. J. Stephenson, President nf ihe Students' Union, occupied the chatr. Three subjects were dealt with—the Washington Conference, the Decay of Civilisation, and the Imperial Conference. Each subject was opened by a member of the union, and Lord Balfour replied in turn to each. Lord Balfour, who had ;«. hearty reception, said he had been asked to 'compare the Washington Conference with other domferences which had taken place, and to expiain why the Washington Conference w»3 a success, whSle the others failed of Ifcpir effect. Unfortunately, \t was the custom wtw for public speakers and public writers to take it as a rmtter of course that the Treaty of Versailles and the other associated treaties were on the whole a discredit to European diplomacy. That would cot, he thought, be the verdict of history. He did not believe tbat thft Treaty of Versailles was perfect. The makers of that treaty endeavoured, with considerable success, ha thought, to make the delimitations of the new Slates brought into existence correspond with the racial and economic r.eccessities of those States. If they could wave a wand and . reoonstrtiet Ihe work done at Versailles, re-draw the frontiers, re-make the nationalities, would they make them materially different from those made by the Treaty? If not, let them not be too hard on those who, under exceptional and extraordinary difficulties, carried out what he believed would be regarded by future historians as an immense work of constructive statesmanship. (Cheers). If the Washington Treaty was a success—and he hoped and believed it was a success—it has several great advantages. In the first place, the sphere of its activities was inrjited to naval armaments —a far easier subject really than the twin topic of land armaments. They should remember that by far the three greatest naval Powers ir. the world—Germany being, at. all events for years to come, a •'Cgligible quantity as regarded •-.•ipilal ships and naval armaments—England, America, and Japan, went to the Conference with a strong desire to see an end put to the race of naval armaments, wilh all the unnecessary burden it thrust upon the already overladen taxpayers. Japan and America were fortunate in being represented by statesmen of the highest ability, who understand what was really the point at which they had to drive, and who raised no petty or unnecessary objections, who wanted a settlement in the spirit of statesmen. They should remembers, also, that all three naval Powers were concerned in the Pacific Ocean rath-er than in the other oceans of the world, and that it was, in fact, the Pacific Ocean which made 'the greatest difficulty and trouble. They met together in the right spirit, wilh a determination to arrive at a fair find statesmanlike conclusion. There were no petty or conflicting cross-cur-rents which interfered with so much diplomacy that would otherwise bo successful, and it was not in such circumstances very surprising tn.it, in so far as their efforts reached a conclusion at all, that conclusion was an eminently satisfactory one. (Cheers.)

Criticism has been made on the rlifllculty of submarines. That matter was hot settled. Really the difficulty of submarines was not the difficulty of competing armaments, but of obeying the laws of humanity at sea as on land after war had once been declared and passions had arisen and people, or swne people, were prepared to do almost anything to secure victory. They dsd pass some resolutions of the most stringent character, which lie hoped would be obeyed when the next navai war came—if a naval war ever did. come again. But unquestionably, from the point of view Of competing armaments, the great triumph cf the Conference was the limitation of capital ships. He had heard one attack made in connection with the Washington Conference or its results. It was directed against the idea of adding to the defences of Singapore. It had created a =reat deal of fueling in pome quarters, in his opinion entirely baseless and founded upon a profound misconception of the facts. Part of the arrangement was that there should be no addition to the existing armaments in certain large areas of the Pacific. The Pacific was delimited and Singapore was deliberately excluded witli the full knowledge and consent of the Americans and Japanese. Therefore the idea that either of those two great and friendly Powers were endangered by anything we '< did at Singapore was wholly baseless. Singapore would, and in fact could, not be made an effective base for purposes of offence. Thai it was a violation of the Treaty or could lead to offensive operations was a baseless nightmare. The money would be spent on defence alone. Lord Balfour then dealt wsth the subject to the decay of civilisation. He said he had never been able to understand the rise, culmination, and decay of the Roman Empire. He was not prepared to admit that our civilisation was obviously decaying. Our command ovor Nature had increased enormously in his own lifetime, and he saw no signs of that, increase diminishing in its rapidity. He thought we should more and more become the masters of the material world in which we lived. He invited them to face their problems in a spirit of failh and hope. Nothing was more tragic than to observe how that spirit of faith and hope gradually decayed in the case ot the Roman Empire, and perhaps thai very decry was one of the cause.* which brought about the fulfilment of the pessimist's fears. They were young and absorbing all knowledge accumulated by their predecessors It was for them to use it m that spirit of faith and hope. (Cheers ; ) If we could not be idealists we cWUiU not he imperialists, because the British Empire must in the main be composed on the ideas of a common civilisation. The fabric of all civilisation was a mixture of that idealism and materialism. Family life, national life, and th-3 life of men in common, had something more than idealism at the base of them. If they had not they hrukc down, but that idcaffism wholly unsupported by any material scaffolding was apt tc be weak and failed in the day of trial. He dd not think that the future of the British Empire was going to b* 1 an easy one. It was the greatest and most difficult task that "any nation had attempted to fulfil. Please God we should fulfil it, but we should not fulfil it effectively if we were always too closely examining such questions as "What do I* as an Englishman or a Scotsman, or an Australian, or a Canadian, get out of it?" That nroflt and loss calculation, that government by double entrx {Jaushier)—tha,t wh the

spirit in which we should approach the problem of our common life. lie tdmsolf would be glad if the Imperial Ctonstiitutiou could always remain unwritten, and it should proceed on those reelings of a comm-on patriotism, common history, common aims, and common ideals, -which, if wc could carry out this great adventure, would be the surest and safest f'rtmdation of an Empire such as the world had as yet never seen either m its magnitude or in ite beneSconoe. {.Loud chjers).