EMPIRE CO-OPERATION

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 711, 11 December 1933, Page 4

EMPIRE CO-OPERATION

In a broadcast speech on "The Empire in World Politics," Mr. J. H. Thomas, Secretary for the i Dominions, said that worldwide ! co-operation was for the moment ! in great difficulties, but there I was within the world a group of nations and peoples called the j 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 war. It was to that end that ahnost the whole of their for- i eign policy was directed. The Go- j vernments of the British Empire j on the eontrary, started from j the assumption that war between j them was inconceivable. They j began where the others left off. I They could direct their energies I to the positive end of achieving j good and not merely to the nega- | tiye end of avoiding evil, and as ' a result could afford, not merely in relations with one another, but in relations with the rest of the world, to seek other than purely selfish ends. The real origin of this positive co-opera-tion for positive ends was the inherent love of personal liberty and self -government in the races which made up the Empire. It was no mere chance that, at a time when democratic government was rapidly disappearing all over the world, within the British Empire it was never more firmly rooted than it was to-day. And it was no mere chance that, at a time of crisis such as that through which the world has been passing, while other countries had 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 Britain — had put into power Governments seleeted not from the representatives of one party alone, but from the representatives of other parties also.