FUTURE OF EMPIRE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 123, 26 May 1937, Page 11

FUTURE OF EMPIRE

HOPES AND FEARS MR. BALDWIN'S ADVICE '(British Official Wireless.) (Received Max 26, 11.50 a.m.) KUGBY, May 25. In his speech at the Empire, Day ban-,, quet last night, the . Prime Minister, Mr. Baldwin, made no reference to his impending ■ resignation, but spoke of his hopes and fears for the future of the Empire. . . ■ The British Commonwealth' of Empire, he said, was the greatest political experiment yet tried in the world, and the failure of it might mean disaster. "I believe we shall not hold together unless we recognise common ideals, a common inspiration, and a common love of of the individual and of the body politic. Let us have sympathy and understanding of each other's problems. Then we shall be less liable to criticise.. Let us have faith in our country,', faith in our own future, and faith In one another. The British Constitution has grown to wliat/it is by the work of men like you. and men—-just ordinary, men-j-who had to adapt the government' of the country to the environment of the age. One of the reasons why our people are still alive and flourishing and have avoided many of the troubles that have fallen to less ■happy nations has been that we have never been guided by logic. "Do not let us put our Constitution in a strait waistcoat, because, if so, strangulation is our ultimate fate. I have been at many Imperial Conferences, and I have been in London bhmany occasions that visitors have come to us from all over the wor^d. but I have never known such a feeling of the family in London as at this time of the Coronation." The Gaekwar of Baroda also spoke. He referred to the British Commonwealth as a living organism changing and developing. The new Constitution for India, he said, was a welcome j step towards the goal of a free and j autonomous unit within the Commonwealth, though more rapid and extensive progress would have been preferred by his- countrymen.