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Hokitika Guardian, 19 January 1933, Page 4

Giving his impression of the changes that have occurred in the British Empire in the last 30 years, M. Andre Siegfried, the French economist and student of British affairs, said that when he first visited it, in 1808, it was united peril a-pw Jess than now by the link of sentiment. The Govcrnor-Generail of a Dominion was a missionary from tile old country to the new, which he was i,ot now, and the Dominions were thoroughly satisfied with wlut political autonomy they possessed. In the years beft.e the war there had been a growing feeling in Canada and Australia that they were nations. Jt was the spirit not of Chamberlain, but of Cecil Rhodes and the Round Table. Instead of a Mother Country with ede Res, the British Empire was a commonwealth of rations. Jt was difficult for a Frenchman to understand that more liberty in the parts was only more strength for the unity of the whole. ID would describe the Biitish Empire by transforming a line of Pas el: “It is like a universe whose centre is everywhere and its circumference- nowhere. It was living because it was Iwsed on the consent of t/ia different parts. To Frenchmen

the- Empire- was a- wild not ion and difficult to grasp. Great Britain ua« G> (.hem the live tiling and the strong lade,;- in the Umpire. Ills conclusion.-, al lor 3-1 years of study were, first, that the greatest, lesson of this Empire, was ft, adaptation to conditions of life. A Frenchman would make a Constitution, with fine words and p-m----isihly not practise it. The Englishman made no- Constitution, hue had an Empire, and his Empire lived. Secondly, they believed in their nation, and their main- quality was the beautiful one of loyalty—-'loyalty to- the King, which meant to the nation. He raw no reason why this Commonwealth should not continue to exist an. indefinite time. It might bo(owe something entirely different in 29 or 30 years, but British civilisation jn the world was absolutely -sure of its future-.