DOMINIONS' FOREIGN POLICY

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 2, 3 January 1936, Page 8

DOMINIONS' FOREIGN POLICY

There is a double interest in the announcement that the Australian Government has decided to increase the staff of the Department of External Affairs and intends to have a number of young officials trained in the British Foreign Office and in specially chosen Embassies abroad (says "The Times"). The two great southern Dominions, formerly isolated by distance from the rest of the world, are being brought daily into closer contact with other countries. This contact at present is mainly economic; but economics and politics cannot be kept separate, and the Dominions are compelled to take a much more active interest than lias hitherto been necessary in the interplay of international forces. Above all recent years have brought developments which all the countries bordering on the Pacific are compelled to take into account. In Australia, where foreign affairs could once be regarded with easy detachment, it is now realised that one of the main duties of the Federal Government is to know and to understand what is taking place abroad. The Commonwealth has not so far felt any need to maintain Ministers and legations in foreign countries, as some of the Dominions are doing; but it evidently means to strengthen its Department of External Affairs in order lo supply the Government with the necessary information kept up to date and properly digested.