GOVERNMENT AND PRESS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2896, 15 September 1909, Page 15

GOVERNMENT AND PRESS.

AN OFFICIAL WELCOME. : • . LONDON, June 18. „ The delegates to the Imperial Press Conference received ihei*^ oSjcial Government. : wektfrae ©n Friday evening, when s representative gathering- toofc place at the Graf■ton G»Uexk«- Lord Crewe, "as* Secretary of 'State for the Colonies, appropriately occupied the chair, and the company in- ' eluded the Archbishop of Canterbury, S'r Hugh Graham- (who sat next to Mr Asquith), the Bishop of London, Lord Alve-rstone fLord Chief Justice), Lord Sfcrathoone, Lord Northcote, Lord Cromer, Lord Burnham. Colonel Seely, M.P., Sir Edward Russetf. Mr Alfred Lyttelton, M.P., Lord Northcliffe, the Hon. H. Lawson, and the Imperial press delegates, also a number of London editors. The Premier's address of welcome wv> brief, but all-embracing. He addrescd himself to the sense oj partnership which in a modern democratic community must inevitably and advisedly exist between the Government of the day and the press to the potent influence of the press and — in spite of partnership — its purity. On the duty of the press., in promoting Imperial unity he referred to the complete harmony between statesmen' and politicians of all parties, as expressed at this week's conference, and spoke of this aa a happy prelude to the Conference on Imr>erial Defence which will meet next month. " OUR GUESTS." The Prime Minister proposed the toast of "Our Guests," and th© following are the main points- of his speech : — His Majesty's Ministers Mt when they lewfned of the arrangements for your visit ; that; they would hot be doing justice either to their duty •or to their inclination if they did not Bnd an opportunity for a : special acknowledgment on their part of the significance of your mission and the importance of your work. For, gentlemen, as is the case •in these days, in every I democratic community, so it is etill more in the case of an Empire such as ours, an Empire- which is he'd together by the tie not of overmastering force, but of common rights end common liberties. In such an Empire there ie, or there ought to be, a sense of interdependence — I will go further, and ©ay a seme of partnership — between the Government and the press. The press is the daily interpreter and j mouthpiece of the tastes, interests, and J ideas — one might almost say the passions and the caprices — of the same people, j How far the press actually dominates, operates as a dominant force in the formation of public opinion, is not quite s-uch a simple question as some people se»m to imagine. The press is ths only authentic mirror and reflection cf the public opinion of the country. Nothing, I think, can have struck ysu more in the speeches to which you have listened from Englishmen, English • statesmen — speeches proceeding from men sitting on both sides of the Houses of Parliament and divided in the arena of domestic politics by the sharpest and most definite lines, — nothing can have struck you more than that when they came to deal with matters which concerned the whole Empire, which belong »3 much to you over the seas as they belong to us here at Home, there was an identity of sense, sometimes almcst an identity of expression, which seemed to produce the effect of men speaking with one voice and from one set of convictions. In relation to the serious and urgent topic of our common and Imperial defence there has been, and there will be in that and in other matters which are common to the Empire, not only no uncertain sound, bat no discordant voice in the utterances either ;

of the hosts or of the guests. This, I think, is a "happy prelude, an auspicious omen, for the Imperial Conference which, is to assemble here "at the_ close of next month I venture to lay great emphasis on that fact, and why ? For this reason : It is the alliance between this ever-growing an-d penetrating eanso of unity and the fullest and freest recognition and assertion of local liberties which is at once the secret and the safeguard of the British Empire.. _To maintain it, to deepen and broaden its foundations, to enrich and dignify its expression, to help to shape it always and everywhere to great ends worthy of a great people, is at once the bounden duty and the sacred privilege of an Imperial press.

MR FENWICK ON UNITY.

Mr v George Fenwick, in responding, said he came to -England believing that the most important question they had to face was an endeavour to arrange for an Imperial " All Red " cable, and to induce those in charge of the cable communications to reduce their rates. He had changed his views. It had been borne in on him that the question of supreme importance was the unity of the Empire. Nothing had impressed him and his colleagues - more than the earnestness with which- the great statesmen of the Empire had devoted to the consideration of that question. 'In the newspapers of one of the great nations of the Continent the .speeches of those statesmen of (he Empire had- been. described. aM^sawur-.. ing of panic! ''Could anydne**wjio . had lis-' tened to or read those speeches imagine Jtfiat there was anything- of pa*ric~in them? —(Loud cheers*) • They had..peen the. logt-^ eal outcome of the devotion of those-states-men to- those great questions, for years past. A quiet resoluteness 'animated the whole of them. Colonials regarded the unity of the Empire as- beyond any discussion. They knew the Government -wa* in accord with the Governments of the various dependencies of the Entire, and they knew there would be no chance of severance. — (Cheers.) Mr S. Langlois (Montreal) and Mr E. S. Cunningham (Melbourne) also replied. Mr Alfred Lyttelton, in proposing the health of the chairman, referred to the absolute equality between the self-governing dominions and the Mother Country. Lord Crewe, in the course of his reply, said : "We had had Imperial Conferences, and he hoped we should have more. We had had, and we should, he hoped, have again, what were called subsidiary Imperial Conferences. We had had many, and he hoped we should have more, of what were ' known as unofficial conferences ; but he believed that this Imperial Press Conference would have effects as permanent, as far-reaching, and as beneficial as any conference which ever had been held, or ever could be held, in this country in the interests of the Empire." — (Loud cheers.) At this official banquet to the delegates. Mr W. S. Douglas sat at the principal table, between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Viscount Wolverhampton ; Mr Fenwick was- between Sir L. Alma-Tadema .and Sir Edward Hope, Mr -Lukin between Colonel Seely and Mr T. P. O'Connor, Mr Cc-hen. between Mr Moberly Bell and; Mr E. George; And. Mr RrM. Macdonald between , Mr,,F. W. Diokioson and Mr J-. Nicol Dunn. " *-