The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1932. OTTAWA CONFERENCE.

Hokitika Guardian, 14 May 1932, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1932. OTTAWA CONFERENCE.

Ix the course of a reference to tile work to be done at Ottawa, a writer cays the declaration of Mr Bennett, the Prime Minister of Canada, tiiax the Conference should sit down ana consider the development of the jbsources of the Empire for the mutual benefit of every section of it will find a. cordial response in New Zealana. But it may be doubted whether the people of the Empire realise now necessary it is that the - conference should be •approached in this spirit. The Empire to-day is not the Empire as we knew it before the wair. It hub ceased to he “controlled” in the sense in which we commonly think of empires as being a vast area not merely under one sovereign but under one adiidivistration., It still acknowledges the.' leadership of Great Britain, but Gr/eut Britain herself has lost, temporarily it may be, her financial supremacy, her industrial supremacy. 50 long as Great Britain had a donun- • ant position in the world it was easy to think of the Empire as being a unit, because the Mother Country provided its defence by sea and by land and its finance, and the trade of the dependencies wa® .so small in comparison with hers that the Empire was, to all intents and purposes, Great Britain. SinCo the wjf.r the self governing Dominions have proclaimed their individuality. The Mother Country no longer controls their foreign policies and we have seen a rapid loosening of the bonds, the constitutional bonds if not the sentimental, that bound the Empire together. We have seen, indeed, a progressive, and even a rapid disintegration of the Empire as a political •unit. What we are, facing at Ottawa in reality >is the problem whether we can create instead an economic unit, whether we can rationalise the trade of the Empire, whether we "can develop in the common interest its vast resources, and whether, in fine, we •can adopt a common policy that will check the drift that has plainly set iu towards dissolution.' It is a far larger problem, perhaps, than the, individual units of the Empire have so far visualised, but that it is the real problem mV one who has watched the course of British history in this century t»an honestly doubt.