The Dominion MONDAY, JUNE 12, 1911. TINKERING WITH THE EMPIRE

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1151, 12 June 1911, Page 4

The Dominion MONDAY, JUNE 12, 1911. TINKERING WITH THE EMPIRE

Feav tears wil' be shed in New Zealand over tho withdrawal of the British Government's scheme for "bridging the gap" between the successive Imperial Conferences. A [good many well-meaning people will feel a little regretful at the missing of what they will probably call "a golden opportunity" to make the Conference continuously operative, but they would be puzzled if they were asked to state specifically tho disease for which the suggested Standing Committee would be a "remedy." It is all very well to speak in vague generalities of the need for continuity between the main Conferences, of machinery to keep the Conference going, of matters constantly turning up which require a Standing Committee to deal with them; but the time has not yet arrived when vague generalities, breeding an equally vague idea that something is wanted for purposes not clearly defined or apprehended, will be considered a compelling mandate to hurry up and thrust a new wheel into the machine of Imperial government. It has been definitely established that on all matters requiring consultation between the Home and colonial Governments consultation will take place. What more, then, is wanted? What arc all tho questions that justify the establishment of a Standing Committee 1 What great want is felt by New Zealand that only a Standing. Imperial Committee can supply? It is a little comical to have New Zealand's representative clamouring for such a Committee, since the outstanding feature of the communications on Imperial matters between Downing Street and the New Zealand Government, as the "Dispatches" laid annually before Parliament make clear, is the difficulty the Homo Government experiences in obtaining replies to its communications. New Zealand is the last place from which complaint should be made of the existing system of communication. The scheme which Mr. Harcourt outlined, and which it is quite obvious his Government considered unnecessary, contemplated a Standing Committee of persons appointed by the overseas Governments, charged with the discussion of any matters referred to fit by the Colonial Office with the assent of the Dominions. His original suggestion seems to have bee., that the High Commissioners might form this Committee, but this idea, was abandoned, as the result of objections, the virtue of which we arc left to guess for ourselves, on the part of the overseas delegates. The scheme was welcomed with open arms by Sir Joseph Waed, and with some qualifications by Mr. Fisher, but was stoutly opposed by General Botha and Sir Wiwrid ■' Laurier. Neither Sin Joseph Ward nor Mr. Fisher appears to have made any attempt to establish either the necessity "for the Committee or the superior advantages of its operation over the present method of direct consultation of the colonial Governments. General Botha and Sir Wilfrid Laurier had therefore no case to destroy, but were able to proceed at once to tho large positive arguments against a special intermediary body. The former pointed out that "the Ministers present at the Conference should be responsible for carrying out its decisions," implying that tho responsibility of the proposed Committee could only be fictitious, as indeed would have to be the case. Sir Joseph Ward himself insisted that in all things "the ultimate power would be in the hands of the different Governments." That being so, how is a ■committee of delegates who cannot move an inch excepting under the orders of their Governments going to do anything that the Governments themselves cannot do direct in the existing circumstances 1 Suppose an actual case. The Committee is presented with a subject for discussion. It discusses it in legirons and presents a recommendation ; but any action that is taken is just exactly the action that would be taken as if the Committee never existed. The Committee can have no power to loose or bind. As defined by the supporters of its establishment, it would merely be a fifth wheel on the coach.

It was doubtless his sense of the absurdity of such an arrangement that prompted Sir Wilfrid Laukier's objection that he "viewed seriously any interference between the Home and tho Dominion Governments." A purely otiose and impotent body such as that suggested could not be an "interference," and

could not be "viewed seriously" by anybody. What was in Sir Wilfrid Laumeh's mind was the feeling that, once established, the Committee would ultimately develop in character, status, and power, and endanger the fundamental relations between the different Governments. One does not require to have deeply studied the biology of political and Governmental institutions, one need look no further than the development of Parliament, the Cabinet, and the Conference itself, to realise that the Standing Committee would obey the basic law of progress by passing, as Herbert Spencer puts it, from simplicity to complexity. This is a consideration that naturally did not occur to Sik Joseph Ward, who spoke in his second speech of the "extraordinary misconception of the nature of the proposal." "The Dominions would still retain the supreme decision," he added, and in a subsequent sentence said "he failed to sec" any "danger," which had evidently been pointed out by previous speakers, but which the cable agent has left us to infer. A distant danger is none the less existent because it is invisible lo the innovator who cannot sen beyond the end of his nose. Sin Joseph Ward is deficient in the historical sense, and is 100 apt, in" Imperial affairs as well as in smaller things, to mistake as a maxim for statesmen that advice which Sydnf.v Smith gave to a gentleman with whom worry was a monomania—"take short _ views." He is as sincere as can be in calling that an "extraordinary misconception" which is really a perfectly sound deduction from the lessons of history. The objection to tho pro-

posed Committee is, not that it would be of little, if any, value, but that it contains the germs of great harm to the Empire. The greatest danger to the Empire is still the socalled "practical" politician, "into whose mind there cntcrsno thought of such a thing as political momentum, still less of a political momentum which, instead- of diminishing or remaining constant, increases. The. theory on which he daily proceeds is that the change, caused by his measure will stop where ho intends it to stop. He contemplates the things his act will achieve, but thinks little of the remoter issues of the movement his act sots up, and still less its collateral issues."