Effort Towards Co-operation

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 41, 11 May 1927, Page 13

Effort Towards Co-operation

COLONIAL CONFERENCE OPENED IN LONDON (British Official Wireless.') Reed. noon. RUGBY, Tuesday. A conference of Governors and other officials representing most of the British colonies, protectorates and mandated territories has been opened at the Colonial Office, and will explore the desirability of holding colonial conferences of a more comprehensive nature at frequent intervals. It will also 'consider the possibility of setting up other machinery to secure a more" effective co-operation between the colonial governments in general administration, economic development, and scientific and technical research. —A. and N.Z.

Mr. L. S. Amery, Secretary of State for the Dominions, in addressing the governors at the Colonial Conference said that there was a large measure of unity in the problems of the colonial Empire. There was small structural administrative unity and each colonial government had its own administrative, medical and other services. Its own scales of pay and pensions and the whole system, with its haphazard complexity and lack of co-ordination, would not be tolerated by “our more logical neighbours across the Channel.” Nevertheless, the British system had certain great advantages, and in his opinion it would be a profound mistake to scrap the essentially local and individual basis of the British system, with its accompanying local pride and patriotism. He was not in favour of some uniform, logical scheme devised at White Hall and then imposed from without, by a service more interested in its individual careers, than inspired by local sentiment.

Against this there was no doubt that the principle of autonomy and self-sufficiency can be carried too far. —A. and N.Z.-Sun.