DOMINION LEADERS

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16263, 13 July 1918, Page 9

DOMINION LEADERS

ACTIVITIES IN BRITAIN

(By Cable.—Press Association. —Copyright.) Australian and N.Z. Oibl© Association.)

LONDON, July 11. Mr Massey and Sir _ Joseph Ward lunched at the Australian Gentlemen s Club. Sir Thomas Mackenzie presided. Mr Massev, replying to tho toast of his, health, characterised tho bombing or a Canadian hospital and tho sinking or the Llandovery Castle as the work of murderous fiends. Now Zealand also had to settle with the Germans for tho recent mining of a steamship off the New Zealand coast. Mr Massey protested against pacifist! dictation regarding the terms of peace, and demanded tho oontinuance of tho J •war until conditions conducive to permanent peaco were attained. He eulogised the Imperial Cabinet and Conference, and urged that British Ministers , should visit the Dominions. Now that ( tho Dominions- were partners in the Empire they should he represented in l ' the National Flag, together with the United Kingdom. He might take an opportunity to submit this to the Imperial Conference. Sir Joseph Ward said that the war was reconstituting tho Empire constitutionally, industrially, economically, and socially. Old class conditions were being destroyed and the foreign dumping of goods into Britain and the Dominions had ended. He urged an unwritten alliance between Britain and; her Dominions, America, and Japan for tho protection of tho Pacific. If Germany were allowed, to return to Samoa and New Guinea she would. inevitably dominate tho Pacific. The prolongation of the -war for five or even ten years would be justified if the British, dominion of tho Pacific were preserved, because he believed that the Pacific would l)L!eom3 tho world's greatest strategical centre. It mattered not what pressure was exerted, Australasia would protest against allowing Samoa and New Guinea to revert to Germany, otherwise the future of every man, woman, and child in Australasia would be endangered. It was imperatively important to induce Imperial statesmen to study tho Pacific. It would surely be possible after the war that the Empire's statesmen could take a hand in,adjusting anv differences between the units of the tlmpire, and thus remove friction and irritation amongst ourselves. Sir Joseph Ward's remarks are regarded in some quarters as referring to the settlement of the Irish questions.