“RATHER INVIDIOUS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 280, 16 February 1928, Page 12

“RATHER INVIDIOUS”

DOMINIONS’ DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATION MINISTERS TO AMERICA By Cable.—Press Association. — Copyright. LONDON, Wednesday. In proposing the health of Sir Hugh Denison, who recently resigned his position as High Commissioner for Australia in America, at a luncheon of the English-speaking Union, the founder, Mr. Evelyn Wrench, said: “It is rather invidious that Australia, New Zealand and South Africa do not have the same diplomatic .representation at Washington as Canada has. I am convinced that ultimately they will have their own Ministers. ' This would not weaken, it would rather strengthen the Empire.” Sir Hugh, in replying, said that if he were in the chairman’s position he would say what he had said. “But I am under an obligation to my Government and cannot express my views until I have discussed the whole thing with the Prime Minister, Mr. Bruce. But I can express a pious hope that our position will be materially strengthened as the result.” The former Agent-General for Western Australia, Sir James Connolly, said he did not subscribe to Mr. Wrench’s proposal, but he endorsed the American Admiral C. P. Plunkett’s view, that after the Dominions’ Conference it would be a disaster to civilisation if the freedom of the Dominions meant the disintegration of the Empire without the leadership of Britain. —A. and N.Z.