Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 1937. IS IT A PIPE OF PEACE?

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 123, 26 May 1937, Page 10

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 1937. IS IT A PIPE OF PEACE?

Smoking his "familiar brier pipe" —and the only pipe-smoker present —Stanley Baldwin delivered his last Prime Ministerial speech on May 24 (Monday) at the Empire Day and Coronation banquet.' May 24, the birthday of Queen Victoria, was fittingly selected fof' Empire Day because the reign of Victoria covered a particular period in the consolidation' and expansion of the British Empire. Today there has been a radical change. No one now considers expansion (Polar, regions perhaps excepted). Even ■ Rudyard Kipling- lived to be out-dated, in much of his'politics. For good or ill, the British democracy (with other democracies, in a lesser degree) has changed its thought; and, be it noted, has done so right in the face of a dictatorship reaction in Europe. So much has altered since Victoria's period that it seems to be prophetic that, on her birthday (which is also Empire Day) the last big public appearance should be made of Baldwin and his pipe, bolh of them links with Victorianism. The drama of this exit is heightened by the fact that this year is the centenary (of Victoria's accession to the Throne. One hundred years ago the British Empire contained no New Zealand; New;' Zealand went begging till Wakeneld forced the British Government's hand. /Today there are no .New Zealands going begging; on the contrary, a Great Power will pour forth blood and treasure and poison gas, and will also risk a European War, even for an Abyssinia. The Empire whose Victorian history Mr. Baldwin surveyed on May 24 is today finished; but some other empires are only beginning. Whose property will they begin on? As the smoke curls upward from Mr. Baldwin's brier pipe, he sees in it the picture of the past hundred years, from the time when a young girl ascended the Throne to the time when a middleaged man vacated it; but he would be clairvoyant if he could see in the smoke-wreaths the picture of the next hundred years or even of the next decade. The fact that the Prime Minister was "the only man smoking a pipe" is a reminder that times .change. Fancy only one pipe in all that assemblage, and possibly few or no beards. One is forced to conclude that there was only one pipe there because women no longer have need of a pipe, except perhaps in a Maori kainga. The ladies have their cigarettes. : . Mr. Baldwin's exit contains none of the bitterness, yej: something of the portent, that surrounded the departure of Bismarck from the German Chancellorship. "Punch's" cartoon, "Dropping the t Pilot," -is famous, .because a young Emperor got rid of a veteran Chancellor and set off on a career that lost him his Crown. In no such blaze of Royal fury does Baldwin depart, although there has been but lately a Royal tragedy. Instead, the Prime Minister steps down from his post as one who in his day secured peace within and without, yet only with the greatest difficulty. He smoked at the banquet the pipe of peace; but whether that pipe of peace is symbolic of the future of Europe who can say? All that can be said is that the change of pilots in Britain is likely to be marked with no change in aim. Beyond that, nothing is known of what is ahead of the new pilot; and Dominion delegates' differences on foreign affairs is the readiest proof that the pilotage is not easy. It is declared th«t in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom. But the collective wisdom of Dominion delegates in foreign affairs seems to suggest that the ship of Empire should steer north and south at one and -the same time, arid should accomplish millennial results on a minimum of armed preparation and of resource in danger. White other Powers are beginning to build empires by the welding process, the British Empire,l less than a generation after the Boer War, was already deeply occupied in the releasing process—the plan of making Empire bonds optional and of using the Crown as connecting

link. This last radical change has happened right in the Baldwin period, and the principal European reaction (the German dictatorship) has come into being within the span of Mr. Baldwin's last Prime Ministership. How, then, can his exit be dissociated from the prevailing portents —European and world-wide —of a period in which he has been so eminent an actor? His parting advice —"Define not your Constitution"—must be read in connection with the paralysis in the United States (where one of the greatest popular majorities in history has created a Government which dare not amend the written Constitution) and in the Australian' Commonwealth, where a Government which was courageous enough to tackle the Constitution 'instead of the Courts was defeated by referendum. Secession in the United States led to years of civil war. Secession in the British Empire more than once, has" lost its punch through the flexibility of the: Constitution —its independence, as far as possible, of writing, and of the logical mould into which,that tyrant, the written word, casts us. Well may the departing pilot say: Be. not keen to define our Constitution; we can do without-logic—not without common sense. ~