EMPIRE’S PROBLEMS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 862, 4 January 1930, Page 7

EMPIRE’S PROBLEMS

SOLUTION LIES IN UNITY, NOT DISSOLUTION CONSERVATIVES ACTIVE Lnitcd I'. A. — Fy Telegraph—Copyright LONDON. Friday. The "Morning Post's” political correspondent says he understands that the Conservative Research Committee is giving attention to Empire development in accordance with Mr. Baldwin’s speech in November. He then said the leaders of the party were framing an Empire policy which was certain to place the Empire in a leading position on the Conservatives' programme at the next, election. The correspondent says no party and certainly none of the business interests wants a dissolution vet if it can be avoided. It may he a different story, however, early in the autumn. In the course of a h at a t’onsrrvHtive mass meeting on November 21. Mr. Baldwin, Deader of tlio Conservative Party, said: "Our progress depends on our capacity to vi&ualiso the Empiro, Dominions and colonies alike as one eternal and indestructible unit for production. consumption, distribution and the maintenance and improvement of tho lot of all those who under Providenco are dwellers within the confines of our Commonwealth. ”The business men of this countrv ha\o frequently issued a manifesto which—whether I agree with it or not is immaterial at the moment—yet again brings before the people another aspect of this many-sided question, the unity of this great Empire. There lies our problem. If is the task of a generation to solve. Tn it rests the question of the employment, of our people and the continuation of the beneficent existence itself of our Empire.” SMUTS LOOKS AHEAD TASKS WHICH REMAIN OTTAWA, Friday. Speaking at Ottawa this evening. General Smuts, Leader of the Opposition in South Africa, who is here on a visit, said libertj' and nationhood had been achieved in the Dominions of the British Empire, but another task remained which must be undertaken—the task of giving form and substance to the unity of the British Commonwealth of Nations. That great structure should become the most enduring of all time. Whatever storms might blow, as they had blown in tho past, and whatever vicissitudes were before it. that ship or Empire should weather the storm. “This great Commonwealth of ours.” continued the speaker, “should remain for all time an example of the embodiment of human liberty and political genius, an instrument of happiness not. only to us but to the other nations of the world. Dominion status has proved the solution of the Empire’s problems which seemed to be insoluble.”