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Hokitika Guardian, 11 December 1933, Page 4

In u broadcast speech on “The Empire in World Politics/’ Mr J, -H, Xhgmas, Secretary for the • Dominions, said that worlcl-wide co-operation was for the moment in great difficulties, but there was within the world a group of nations and peoples called the British Empire, covering between them more than a quarter of the earth’s surface and including nearly a. quarter of the human race, in which co-opera-tion had. not only not- failed but was living and growing. The relations between other nations and peoples were based fundamentally on the desire to avoid Avar. It Avas to that end that almost the Avhole of their foreign policy Avas directed. The Governments of the British Empire, on the contrary, started from the assumption that Avar between them was inconceivable. They began where the others left off. They could direct their energies to the positive end of achieving good and not merely to the negative end of avoiding evil, and as a result could afford, not merely in relation Avith the rest of the Avorld, to seek other than purely selfish ends. The real origin of this positive co-opera-tion for positive ends Avas the inherent love of personal liberty and self-gov-ernment in the races Avhicli made up the Empire. It was no mere chance that, at a time Avhen democratic government Avas rapidly disappearing all over the rest of the Avorld, within the British Empire it Avas never more firmly rooted than it Avas to-day. And it Avas not mere chance that, at a time of crisis such as that through which the world had been passing Avhile other countries bad turned to dictatorship in its various forms, no less than four of the great nations in the British Empire—Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and ourselves had put into ooAver Governments selected not from 'the representatives of one party alone, but from the representatives of other parties also.