The Daily News. THURSDAY, APRIL 7. DOWNING STREET AND THE DOMINIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 357, 7 April 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, APRIL 7. DOWNING STREET AND THE DOMINIONS.

,The relations betweei "Downing -Street" .and the Governments of the King's dominions have undergone a distinct change within the labt few years. Formerly the Colonial Office had a mere academical knowledge of colonial matters; and some of the mistakes made .were very irritating. It seemed to the .average citizen of any of the great Imperial States outside Britain that the Colonial Office rather looked upon matters of colonial business as derogatory to the dignity of high officials. The expansion of British interests during the last decade has enormously increased the importance of the relations between I headquarters and outposts, and it is I .because it has become necessary from a defensive standpoint to cement all Imperial interests that British statesmen ,have studied colonial matters at all. For instance, New Zealand, from being a mere mark on the map, has become a remotely possible spot on which an enemy might launch an attack. It is, .further, a spot from which a small proportion of British people may get their daily chop, some of their clothes, and a good deal of their butter. But more than all, it is a place peopled by persistent folk who by their own initiative have insisted on better recognition from ieadquarters. The events of the paßt •ifew years have aided English study of Australasia, England had no notion of 4he material in men available until thirty or forty thousand colonials became soldiers for her. Australia was only a large red blot on the map until Australia showed its nationhood by dignified objection to imposition in respecii of whom and what it should receive from. overseas. Australasia has shown that while it is a huge creditor of John JJull, it is also a great asset in the Imperial scheme. For these and many jeasons Britain has found colonial matters well worth enquiring into. The Colonial Office in these days is just as ready to send an emissary to New Zealand as it formerly was to despatch a messenger to St. Martin's le Grand. The (visit of the Under-Secretary for State *o the Colonial Office—Sir Charles F. 'Lucas—was an Imperial recognition that emphasised the point we make, that the colonies are necessary, and that every diplomatic course must be taken to continue to hold them under the of the King and his successors. Sir Charles Lucas is officially—so far as we are concerned—the most eminent man in the British Civil Service, with particular aptitude for examining all the conditions prevailing in the outside dominions. He is familiar with our history, for his "Historical Geography of the British? Colonies" is an authoritative work. His comments, unlike those of wandering impressionists, axe practical. He "insists" on the necessity of faster mail services between Britain and her colonies, but he does not say whether he* objects to us calling ourselves "God's Own Country." He believes in cheaper cablegrams, but he makes no comparison between "flaccid" Australians and London West-Enders. He wants Britain's Britons and colonial Britons to meet and to understand one another, and so he would like cheaper sea communication "to enable Labor representatives to visit England." From the nature of his position, Sir Charles Lucas necessarily sees and thinks ImHe has found that in Aus-. tralia and New Zealand there is keenness about getting youths into the Imperial services, and from his point of vie sv the colonial boy who is in the King's Navy in the Mediterranean, or the King's Army in the Bermudas, or the King's Civil Service in India., is just as properly employed as if he were at home in Melbourne, Wellington, Adelaide, or Ottawa. Interchange of men and thought is the only method to be employed for real expansion. The genius may be born in a village, but his genius will not develop there. He must rub >is intellect with the world. And so with imperial schemes. Imperial emissaries of reasonable view and broad sympathies may do very much for the colonies, and so Downing Street, advised by < so eminent an advocate as Sir Charles Lucas, may now view the colonies with even a more keen and appreciative eve than formerly.