IMPERIAL FEDERATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 138, 29 October 1912, Page 4

IMPERIAL FEDERATION.

Viscount Eslier, a member of the Committee of Imperial Defence, and one of the most able and notable of the Empire's statesmen, has just written a book on the functions and' potentialities of the Committee of which he is such an illustrious member. His book enables us to have a clearer idea of the Imperial Defence Committee. This body, although possessing none of the prestige and glamor of one of the old State departments, is actually perhaps the greatest of governing forces to-day. Freed from hampering traditions and remarkably elastic in its constitution, the Committee yet represents a Cabinet Council with the advantages of technical advice and without the drawbacks inevitably attendant upon a meeting of Ministers alone, the majority of whom are amateurs in their office and quite under the guiding influence of.their permanent officials. To convince a Cabinet Council argument must be repeated for each individual member beforehand, with the glorious uncertainty as to the lasting effect of the conviction when the Minister is amongst his colleagues around the council table. In the Committee of Imperial Defence, however, those who know can talk to those who do not but are in power in the Government en bloc, "and see decisions taken without delay. While possessing no executive authority, and having been founded with no definite attributes, the Committee has already become all-powerful, and offers possibilities in the future of becoming the centrepoint of the whole Imperial structure. It therefore is of immense value to the world to have Viscount Esher's clear "expose" of how it has developed and to read his views as to the Committee's future. For Viscount Esher is one of the most active members of the Committee, bringing to its work not only an exceptional experience, but also imparting to its deliberations an attitude of non-official independence leavening the official whole. The Committee of Imperial Defence lias the advantage of being a "nucleus" body without any "fixed composition." It therefore lends itself excellently for development into a true Imperial Council, in which representatives of all parts of the Empire will meet and discuss with continuity the continuing needs of the Empire. Viscount Esher has "never ceased publicly and privately to advocate the representation of the dominions upon the Committee." The writer prefaces his remarks by stating "that no man who has regard for the individual or collective happiness and prosperity of his fellow-countrymen can look upon war otherwise than as the greatest of all curses, and naval and military preparations for'war otherwise than as the most odious of all necessities." He goes on to sav that—

"We are sometimes told that vast preparation for war, expensive and burdensome, crushing down the full expansive commercial activities of a nation, inflicting hardship upon every individual man or woman and child composing a nation, is unnecessary, and is economically unsound, because the economic result of defeat to the individual are not so heavy as the economic weight of preparation. This I honestly believe to he true, and, if men were governed liv economic considerations alone, would furnish an unanswerable reason for abandoning preparations for war. Men, and nations of men, however, are the slaves of passion and of unreason, and the great drama o{ War often moves within a. snhere from which man's imagination excludes all considerations of prudence. There is always the odd chance in reserve, and there is always the haunting possibility of the ancestral house and home in ruins. Given, then, that preparation for war is a high premium which every nation governed by wisdom and forethought is bound to pay for insurance against possibly tragic disaster, it surely follows that preparation, which is bound to be expensive in any case, should be as complete as it can be made by all the coordinated forces that can be concentrated at the critical moment upon the enemy. No one who has read the reports of what occurred at the Imperial Conference, and has watched the attitude of the dominion Parliaments, can be under any illusion about the nature of the ties between the Mother Country and the great self-governing communities that form part of the British Empire. These ties are in the main sentimental, and, although quite recently there are indications that the dominions are not unwilling to take part in defending the Empire against attack, any attempt to formulate strategic plans, based on common action, would be premature, and might not impossibly prove to he disastrous. There is no immediate prospect of the British Executive Government being able to impose its ideas of naval or military strategy upon tlie Defence Ministers of the dominions, and still less of the British Parliament being able to control or even to influence the action of the Dominion Parliaments. For purposes of Imperial defence the Empire is not a federation, but an alliance between greater and lesser States upon terms not so clearly defined as those which subsist between some of the States of Europe. It is by no means a satisfactory state of things, but there is no help for it, until the dominions realise more fully that their security from attack, during a long period which is bound to elapse before they attain to maturity in population and wealth, is inextricably bound up with the security of Great Britain. That any of the dominions would, in the event of a great war, leave the Mother Country in the lurch is highly improbable; but they are not prepared'to bind themselves to any specific joint plan of action under circumstances over which they have no control, in spite of the obvious Imperial difficulty and danger of leaving the principles of common action to be determined at the

last moment, on the eve of war. The co-ordination of the material forces of the country for war is not the sole concern of the Admiralty and the War Office, but includes in its active sphere almost every branch of civil administration; and, further, that the conditions under which all the forces of the Empire can be co-ordinated are constantly changing. It follows that, whether for purposes of war preparation in time of peace, or whether for the purpose of taking those initial steps in war which decides its theatre and objectives, the supreme co-ordinating authority can only be the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, who are responsible to Parliament.

Viscount Esher concludes his survey of the development of the Committee with the following aspiration:— "That we may live to see the great dominions sending annually their representatives to sit upon the Committee of Imperial Defence, and that thus a long step may be taken towards the federation of the Empire which has been the dream of patriots here and oversea."