EMPTY SPACES.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 May 1922, Page 5

EMPTY SPACES.

AUSTRALASIA’S PROBLEM. PEACE OF PACIFIC. SECURITY IN STRENGTH. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. London, May 23. Lord Northcliffe, in a special article in The Times Empire Supplement on “Empty Australasia,” asks what is awaiting our Dominions in the Pacific, where Australia and New Zealand stand as the twin trustees of the Empire's destiny. When the Great Powers met at Washington, Australia was more vitally interested, her voice heard with more respect, her fate more irrevocably bound in the issue than at Versailles or Paris. “I know how far the efforts of Mr. Pearce and Sir John Salmond went to help in the happy solution, which was found in abrogation of the old alliance. The formation of the new Pacific Pact brings Australia peace for the present, but responsibility for the future, because the two southern Dominions support our corner stone in tne Four Power Agreement.” The Times, in a leader, says the Empire is no longer a group of far-flung dependencies, but a chain of mighty nations girdling the world. National and Imperial greatness is far more likely to be achieved by securing the substance, viz., the unity of Britain and her Dominions, than by chasing the shadow of European reconstruction among nations that have yet to find reconstruction themselves. Co-opera-tion among our own kith and kin is surely the key which will lead the nation from the darkened maze wherein it wanders to-day. The Empire Settlement Bill stands as the most notable land-mark in our history. The benefits of inter-Imperial migration are threefold in character. The Dominions will gain development of their resources by peopling their empty spaces; Britain will gain relief for her surplus population and assistance to unemployment; the Empire win gain a gradual strengthening of the ties which bind the component, parts together by preserving the Empire’s alliances and developing her resources. Above all the Empire will gain the cultivation of the understanding of which is born mutual confidence and affection which will keep it a Commonwealth that for long will stand foursquare to all the world.

THE TIMES SUPPLEMENT. IMPERIAL MATTERS DISCUSSED. London, May 23. The Times’ Empire Supplement devotes a generous space to Australasian affairs, in which are several columns with a description of the social, sporting, commercial and productive attractions of New Zealand, all of which are most cordially presented to readers. Special attention is paid by one article, on the result of the Washington Conference, to the Imperial relations of the Dominion. It is suggested that the Dominion Parliament does not realise the vitality of the problems with which the Imperial Conferences are faced. The Times says: “The Imperialism of the country is stirred to a brighter flame every four years or so, but to a flame which has more light than heat, which shines more brightly in London than in the Dominion, and languishes when the conference is over.” The article continues: “The desperate look which the naval problem of the Pacific presented a year ago has disappeared, yet even the total disappearance of capital ships from the Pacific and every other ocean would not alter the essential fact that New Zealand is absolutely dependent on tne Empire’s sea power, yet is not bearing her fair share of the cost.”