The Dominion. SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1911. A VALUABLE CONFERENCE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1162, 24 June 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1911. A VALUABLE CONFERENCE.

The first question that must suggest itself in any retrospect of the Imperial Conference is, of course: Has there been any fulfilment of the expectation of many people that the Empire would be brought appreciably nearer to organic- federation? And tho answer must bo in the negative. The keynote of the transactions was co-operation, and the common character of the decisions recorded is their tendency to a greater ease and freedom in the working, of the existing rhachincry of the Empire's government. All this, of course, .is.action-in.a direction right away from the goal of the Federationists. Everything that makes for freo alliance, and a greater efficiency in the freedom of association, is another barrier in tho way of a rigid and' artificial reconstruction of the relations between the co-operating peoples. Satisfactory as this must be to those who neither sec the need for Federation or Imperial Councils —whether advisory, legislative or executive' in status—nor blind themselves to the : grcat : dangers in any Federal scheme, ifc'is still more satisfactory to know that the one clear opportunity that arose for admitting the Federal idea found all the Prime Ministers of the Empire ranged firmly against Sir Joseph Ward. The net result of the Conference is very cheering. It contains la strong assurance• that we can at all times count upon' the presence in the Empire's councils of a strong conservative reluctance to be won from the lessons of experience by the fascinations of experiment; and it illustrates the healthy elasticity of the Imperial organism. None of the resolutions carried cut, in the terms in which they were carried, at the root of the present system of loose association or co-operative alliance, not even that important do- 1 cision respecting the exclusion of any colony" so desiring from Britain's general treaties—for that resolution was no more, it must Le remembered, than a direction that Britain should do what she could, and only that. Yet all the effective resolutions propose changes of less or greater importance and reality. We do not propose here to summarise the business transacted, but only to indicate tl.c general character of tho work done. Owing, there is every reason to believe, to his' admission to the secret meeting upon foreign policy, Mr Fisher withdrew his motion condemning the Declaration of London, to which, alone amongst the oversea Prime Ministers, he had given some sound and careful thought. That Mr. Fisher withdrew his motion, substituting an affirmation of the general principle of consultation, will be held against him, perhaps, as a sign of weakness, or of defeat by the British delegates, but it is a much less incredible hypothesis that his action was the direct outcome of his private view of Britain's foreign policy. The admission of the Prime Ministers to tho region that is preserved from the gaze of all save the Kino's advisers cannot but have a good result in giving the oversea Governments the means of accommodating the local view to the general policy of the Empire. The Government that could see tho wisdom of giving this_ education to the visiting Prime Ministers can hardly be fairly accused of a want of initiative. AVhat, anyway, did its want of initiative amount to? It amounted simply to keeping its head. To be sure, it proposed a Standing Committee for the "bridging of the gap," which it withdrew owing to its failure to secure unanimity; but it is quite plain that it had no love for the scheme it submitted, but was concerned only to give the Conference an opportunity to do something if it really wanted to. In other words, its proposal was intended as a further and convincing test of the Federal idea, and the Conference very wisely refused to admit even this very thin end of the wedge of an ultimate disruption. Perhaps, also, it was weak and flabby to modify the proposal for.an Imperially-owned cable system by a proviso requiring the prior justification of a continued ovcr-nxploitation of the public by. the cable companies.

No doubt, too, some enthusiastic "rushers" will deplo 'c its insistence on restricting the warning to shipping "combines" to combines "prejudicial to trade." But if its action in these matters was weak and timid, most peoplo, upon reflection, will decide that strength and boldness would have been synonymous for ignorance and folly."

In the past, as Mr. Richard Jekb shows in his new work The Imperial Conference, the whole series of meetings have been dominated by the economic issues like Imperial Preference, cables and. communications, and some of the more ardent Foderationists deduce from this fact the dependence,of Imperial salvation upon formal commercial bonds. But the obvious deduction must be merely that improved communications and greater facilities for reciprocal trade have so far been the greatest and simplest needs of the Empire. At this last Conference Tariff Reform figured not at all, the "All-Red Mail Route" proposal was dismissed and replaced by an amusingly simple declaration that the best possible mail connection was desirable, and the other "economic" schemes were treated as quite minor affairs. We arc quite unmoved by the recent speech of Mr. Balfour, whose vision of "the Empire yet to be" belongs to the same world as Tennyson's vision.of "the future yet to be"—a vague and pleasant fancy that it would be stupid ever to forget but that it would be still more stupid to confound with practical politics. Imperial government and Imperial policy arc matters of fact, not of fancy, and we believe that the late Conference has rendered the Empire the great service of driving bornethis humble truth to ears and minds besotted with Imperialist rhetoric and unrealities. "It is only after prolonged and often painful selfexamination," says Professor-L. P. Jacks, one of the truly great English thinkers of to-day, in his most recent work, "that any of us can realise the extent to which our minds are in bondage to words, to phrases, to formulae." This is nowhere more strikingly true than in the of current thought and discussion upon the Empire. In the very latest writing we have seen by any of the well-known "students" of Imperialism—Mr. L. S. Amery's review of Mr. Jebb's book in the Morninq Post a month ago—we find it stated, as a final conclusion, that "wc are confronted . . . with

certain common tendencies making for disruption," and that "what wo have to find is a working solution which will direct the centrifugal forces into a common channel, and which will provide an adequate common policy of defence." What are these "common tendencies making for disruption" 1 these "centrifugal forces" '? this "common channel" 1 They arc words only. The Imperialism of the future will be the return from purple dreams to dun realities, from fancies' to fads; and we have hope, as we-have said, that the Conference just ended, so practical and so conservative, will help the awakening.