The Press Monday, December 5, 1927. Imperial Affairs.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19175, 5 December 1927, Page 8

The Press Monday, December 5, 1927. Imperial Affairs.

The Leader of the Opposition complained very justly on Friday of the lateness of the Prime Minister in presenting his report on the Imperial.Conference. There was, it is true, very little for Mr Coates to report, because everything essential -relating to the Conference was published long ago, and Mr Coates's own impressions and his view of the position of the Dominion arc perfectly well known. But it is not right that the position and policy of the Dominion as a State of the Empire should be treated year after year as something to be dealt, with perfunctorily in a brief discussion at the very end of the Parliamentary session. "While we support Mr Holland's protest, our reasons for protesting are very different from his. It seems to us that our legislators would be all the better for giving so much time to thought upon Imperial affairs, and the duties and responsibilities of the Dominion, as would enable them to discuss the problems of Empire as seriously and intelligently as they can, at their best, discuss matters of purely domestic concern. It is not that there arc critical difficulties or irksome anomalies needing attention, or serious defects in Empire relations that call for remedy or amendment. The vast majority of the people of New Zealand are well content with the existing conditions. But a more active consciousness of tie Dominion's status in the Empire is very desirable. It is not for reasons like these that Mr Holland complains of the small amount of time given by Parliament to the consideration of Imperial affairs. For the Labour Party Imperial policy is some-, thing to bo wrangled about, the Imperial Conference a gathering of Imperialists bent upon misleading the people, and the Empire itself something like a wicked combination of undemocratic interests. Mr T. M. Wilford scarcely went beyond the fact when, in the course of Friday's debate, he said that the Labour Party's view on Imperial matters was " so - im- " possible that it was not understand"able." The Labour politicians profess to fear that the existing conditions make it possible for New Zealand to be dragged into a war of which its people might disapprove. Theoretically, we suppose, this is possible, just as many things are possible which common sense tells us will not happen. In this particular case common sense says plainly that the British Government, in conducting its foreign policy, cannot but remember that that policy must be such as the Dominions will support. The Dominions have no seats or voices at meetings of the British Cabinet, but they are there all the same, and they are just as well represented by their presence in the minds of British statesmen as they would be by the presence of delegates at any Imperial Council. The time may come —it must come—when the population and power of the Dominions will exceed the population and power of the British Isles, and it may then be necessary to have some new instrument of Imperial government. That time is still so far away that there is no need for any alteration in a system which, however displeasing to the eye that loves a rigid and logical machine, works very well indeed, and has behind it what Mr Coates found at the Conference, and what anyone can find anywhere in the self-governing Dominions, namely, "goodwill and a determination to re- " tain undiminished in strength the ties "that bind the Empire together."