MOTHER COUNTRY.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 April 1919, Page 5

MOTHER COUNTRY.

UNITY OF EMPIRE,

STIRRING SPEECH BY LORD MILKER, Received April 14, 9.50 p.m. London, April 11. Lord speaking at a luncheon given by the Manchester branch of the Colonial Institute, said the transformation in the relations between the Motherland and the dominions was almost complete. The dominions were entitled to look to a future in which they will be great powers, yet they all desired to remain in the Empire, and if this desire was fulfilled the world would see what it had never seen before—a number of great powers under a single head. It would be, and was, in fact, already, a League of Nations, but possessing a moral unity which the greater League had still to acquire. No machinery of administration could be of any avail unless we preserved moral unity in the Empire. He attached much importance in this connection to Imperial preference. This had been treated too much as if it were an affair of tariffs, but the root of the matter was that we were a family of nations, and in all our policy dealings that family's interests should come first. We should not go in for washy internationalism and pretend to care for Paraguay or Bolshevia equally with Canada, Australia, South Africa, or New Zealand. He hoped that the practice of the dominiotas' Ministers sitting side by side with British Ministers in matters of common concern would never end. The present arrangement had been an unqualified success. Dominion Ministers had taken a real share in the conduct of the war policy. No amount of affection or goodwill between the several States would enable the Empire to exercise a proper influence in the world unless maintained by means )of planning and acting together' as one Power.—Reuter.