THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 15 July 1929, Page 8

THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH

"If anything absolutely new can be traced to' the possession of our Empire, it must bo traced to the mdsfc original fealuro in it, the progressive development of dependencies into independent partner nations which have nevcrllie. less remained by the Mother Country's side and under the same Sovereign," says Sir Charles Lucas, .in the introduction to the first volume of the Cambridge History of the British Empire. Quoting the. definition of their status by the Imperial Conference of 1926, he pro.ceods:—"lV* this there is no parallel in history, and perhaps it would be fair to say that, whereas the present pairtner nations /overset* were OUCO, but havo ceased to be, dependencies of Great Britain, the life of Great Bn-. tain as a nation is now, as it was not formerly, conditioned by its- partnership with these other nations. One result is that those citizens of Great Britain who think at all on political and constitutional questions are compelled now to think not only imperially, as Joseph Chamberlain counselled, but internationally—in a new sense as opposed to a contirient-of-Europe sense. Under the old order, .as late as Palmerston's regime or even later, colonies inarched infinitely far behind foreign Powers in the consideration of British statesmen. It is not so now. In our outlock on the future the British Commonwealth of Nations takes the first place."