India Has No Middle Course In Commonwealth

Chronicle (Levin), 11 April 1949, Page 5

India Has No Middle Course In Commonwealth

CAPE TOWN, April 9. ■ Field Marshal Smuts, in an interview. stated that India 's claim to be an independent republic and not under tho British Crown' but in some association with it, "violated every eoncept of the Commonwealth, was a subversion of the Commonwealth and a substitution for it of something quite different." He added that "there was no middle course be tween the Crown and a Republic. If India ehose to be an independent Republic outside the Commonwealth/ there could only be an external treaty of relationship if she still wished to have any relations with the Commonwealth. "If the Commonwealth eoncept is tampered with or destroyed and it is still prqposeU to continue the Commonwealth svstem, there will have to be a new basis of agreement between member States with a written constitution on the lines of the League of Nation? or an organisation of united nation^ It is assumed that neither India nor any 'members of the 'Commonwealth would favour such a plan, thereforp what India appears to wish is not compatible with the Commonwealth anfi cannot be achieved in terms of it. " Field Marshal Smuts said great care should be taken not to empty the eoncept of the Commonwealth of all substance and meaning and not whittle it away until nothing but the word remained. "In war and peace the Com monwealth played a bfeneficent part in human affairs and still remains a bulwark of human advanee and a pointer to perhaps still greater development for man," he added.