Round the Table.

Huntly Press and District Gazette, Volume 4, 26 March 1915, Page 3

Round the Table.

THE DOMINIONS AND THE WAR. 111. “ The practical question remains —how, within the limits of the present system, to make consultation as full and effective as possible. One condition imposes itself at the outset “ In the first place, the Dominions can no more be separately represented in a European Conference than their own different provinces and states can be seperately represented in an Imperial Conference. If the British Empire is to remain a single State, it cannot speak in an international assembly with the voice of several different governments. The result may best be imagined if the German and Austrian Empires were likewise to be represented by separate delegates from Prussia, Bavaria, Austria, Hungary, Saxony, Bohemia, and so on through the list of their chief kingdoms and principalities. The tendency of Hungary to pursue a separate diplomacy from Austria is, indeed the weakest point yet revealed in the armour of the German Allies. The German Empire will commit no such follies. If the British Empire were to show any signs of committing them, it would suffer incalculably both in the settlement and afterwards.

“It is equally plain, in the second place, that the British plenipotentiaries cannot be responsible to several different governments. They may be aided by advisers from the Dominions ; it is probably essential that they should. But their supreme instructions must come from the British Government, whose servants they will be, it the British case is not to suffer as much as from the appointment ofsepaiate representatives. “ The practical means of bringing the settlement into accord with the feeling oi all the British democracies resolve themselves accordingly into two expedients —adequate consultation beforehand and a prop-- provision of advisers from the Dominions to help the British plenipotentiaries when negotiation begins. Of these expedients the former is the more important ; for if the advisers are to be broadly in accord, the Governments instructing them must have a common understanding at least on matters of principle. Consultation beforehand must therefore be provided for, and it cannot well be carried on through the medium of correspondence, which is not only slow but largely ineffectual. What is needed, to begin with, is just such a review of the British position as was given to the Conference of 1911* when Sir Edward Grey is understood to have covered broadly the whole range of essential British interests. After such a review, there would naturally follow an exchange of opinions on many points of detail. Australia and New Zealand would, for instance, be able to state their views upon the disposal of the captured German possessions in the Pacific ; South Africa would state hers upon the African aspect of the settlement. But opinions on detail could not bo profitably exchanged until all the Governments were in possession of the general information which the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs would make it his business to provide “ These things being so, it is clear that consultation must have taken place weil before the time for actual negotiation arrives, if it is to be more than a mere form. Nor can any method of consultation be really effectual except the meeting in London ol representatives of the Dominions adequately qualified to speak for their respective peoples and Governments. It is therefore very interesting to note that Sir Robert Borden, in one of the speeches quoted on a previous page, dwelt at some length upon the benefit secured to Canada during the past few months, and particularly since the outbreak of war, by the presence in London of a responsible member of the Canadian Cabinet acting -as the Dominion representative. “As things stand, however, Canada alone has appointed such a Minister, and the difficulties felt by other Dominion Governments in following her example may.still be insuperable. It is necessary, therefore, to look for some other method of consultation which will meet the convenience of all the GoverniEents equally. ” (To be Continued.)