LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2885, 25 September 1916, Page 3

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

. IMPERIALISM AND COLOUR Sir, —At the forthcoming debate on . October 6 I would like to suggest that a. fourth motion beside the three already decided upon be placed before the meeting, and that it be moved: "That it 'would be to the advantago of the Empire if a council of advisers, consisting of representatives of the various parts of /Empire, but possessing no .initiative.'. authority, were attached to the offico of the Secretary ot State for Oversea Affairs." The object in suggesting the above is .because it appears to me to be the only safe method of linking up tho.Empire without- sacrificing our domestic freedom or embarrassing the Imperial Government. Domestic freedom • is the best of all freedom, and political decentralisation is its god. Given these- conditions, Imperial political subjection is only another name for Imperial freedom.. Under an Imperial Parliament could we retain this, boon of local self-government? I venture the opinion that wo could not. A point' that is overlooked by the ad-, vocato of an Imperial Parliament is the danger that might accruo to our self-governing freedom owing to treaties entered into by that Parliament. When the treaty with Japan materialised she was dealing with Britain, not with the British knipire, and the Dominions being self-governing, the treaty was framed accordingly. Japan recognising that the right of granting migratory liberties throughout tho Empire "was, under existing conditions, outside'the arena of treaty powers, signed tho agreement, but at the same time demurred at the exclusion of her subjects from countries under tho British flag.- ■ Now, what would havo happened under an Imperial Parliament? Japan would have beeu dealing direct with tho Empire as a whole, and the Empire- would havo been bound by the conditions' of tho treaty, or would have to accept tho responsibility of rejecting it, and on her own showing, Japanls stipulation would havo been, "no migratory rights, no treaty." There is food for reflection in the thought of what would bo happening to-day if Japan were throwing her weight on the opposite side' of tho scales of war. An Imperial Parliament would place the Empiro in u political straight-jacket, fraught with internal and external dangers. She is held together to-day by two of the strongest forces known to humanity: 'sympathy and heredity; and these ale doubly strong becauso they aro flexible. Standing four square to tho world no doubt sounds heroic; but the world is a. big place,'and is full of weird possibilities. Even an internal alliance for defenco purposes would lead

us into tho danger zone of treaties. Whatever tho faults of our Imperial political machinery, tno tact remains that it has moulded for us, out of the centuries, tho greatest Empire the earth has known since the da.wn of hjstory.—l am, etc., FRANK BELL. Shannon.