The Daily News. THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 1911. A CONFERENCE AND WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 281, 20 April 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 1911. A CONFERENCE AND WAR.

Mr. Andrew Fisher, Australian Federal Prime Minister, is probably an optimist. In a farewell speech to the country of which he is chief citizen, lie made the remark that he hoped the Imperial Conference would show the people that war is wicked and that it is wrong to create engines for the destruction of humanity. Humanity in the bunch has always held that the destruction of its units is wicked, but has never ceased destroying on that account. The mere decision of a number of men belonging to the most destructive and constructive Empire existing can have no effect on humanity in the bulk. The Imperial Conference can no more put a limit on destruction than a motion by the Taranaki County Council can kill blackberry or melt the snow on Egmont. The decision of a Colonial Conference cannot rob primal or civilised man of his instincts, or decide leading nations to bury the hatchet. The Imperial Conference is not international. It cannot even represent Imperial thought. It is impossible that either an Imperial Conference or an Empire Parliament can voice the ideals of hundreds of millioas of people of many colors, many creeds, and many ambitions. The wickedness of war is acknowledged without question, but mere platitudes cannot make it impossible, nor can the most trenchant denouncement of any evil slay the evil. Up to now, statesmen have merely asserted that international quarrels are wrong, but they cannot plan international quarrels out of existence by assertions made in conclave among representatives of one Empire, the component portions of which are not likely to war amongst themselves. It is all very well for a public man in this, the most remote and unpopulated part of the Empire, to practically prophesy the disruption of the Empire unless there is "an Empire Senate" to deal with matters that affect the Empire. No selected body of men can hope to deal with these matters, or, at least, to decide them. A great deal too much emphasis is placed on the idea of an Empire Parliament as a panacea for all evils. Parliaments or no Parliaments, it is the peoples of the various portions of the Empire who will work out the destinies of the whole. An Empire Parliament would not understand the Empire. A New Zealand statesman of the most pronounced brilliance could not possibly know what was good for Tndia, and the opinions of Mr. Andrew Fisher on Canadian free-trade would not be so valuable as the opinions of the Montreal merchant. Shortly, an Empire Parliament would be a congregation of amateurs trying to do professional work. Scats in such a Parliament would be compliments to countries that supplied the members, but the body could effect no vitally important work unless all its members had a perfect knowledge of every part of the Empire, the aspirations of its peoples, and a profound sympathy and understanding removed entirely from the parochial standpoint that is the basis of all British Parliaments outside the one at Westminster. "If this Empire is going to continue," said a New Zealand politician, "there must be an Empire Senate." Why a Senate instead of more widely diffused knowledge? Can the Empire be kept from splitting into fragments by politics? Can security, unity and expansion come only as a result of the deliberations of a body of men? The Empire was not made by politics, nor will politics prevent its disruption if it is to disrupt. War will not <yn out nf fashion because a Colonial Conference, which has nothing to do with war, advises all the nations to disarm. The idea of en Empire Parliament, is necessarily founded on the supposition that the Empire is misgoverned at present. To prevent a con-

tinuance of misgovernment—and wherein the misgovernment lies is never statedit is necessary to create a new and distinct body, the only possible excuw fer the existence of which is that it would be coercive. The idea of drawing men from Canada, Australia, India and so o\ to London in order to coerce New Zealanders, for instance, would not have the effect of keeping the Empire from disruption. Why New Zealand should help to decide Canadian or Australian matters cannot be understood. In the matter of Mr. Andrew Fisher's optimism, an Imperial Conference which advises cessation of war simply advises Britain and makes Germany and other heavily armed nations laugh. The other nations do not cease making necessary preparations because a number of British gentlemen, belonging to the most heavily armed nation existing, say so. One can conceive the utility of an Empire Parliament that knew its business, but the only Empire Parliament that can know its business must know its Empire. Apart from a stray politician, generally carrying on a more or less selfish and personal propaganda, our British Parliament knows as little about the people outside its own country as the average schoolboy knows of wireless telegraphy. The Empire Parliament that is to do more than talk and draw its problematical salary must be "a moveable Parliament that will sit from time to time in the capital of each dominion and exhaust all available avenues of knowledge about all of them. The delightfully vagus idea that men not specially qualified can by going to London and sitting there establish the Empire on an everlasting foundation can only be held by theorists or emotion-mongers. An Empire Parliamentarian to be worth his seat will have to live the life of the peoples of every part of it. He will have to be more than a mere theorist, who says that war is wicked and does not show how it shall be prevented. The future of the British Empire is in the hands of the people who have won it and who occupy it. The politicians did not win it, and the majority of them know only an infinitesimal portion of it, its various people and its wondrous organisation.