THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, JULY 19, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8187, 19 July 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, JULY 19, 1906.

The Colonial Conference of 1907 promises to be the most important, gathering of its kind ever held in the EmDire. Representatives of the whole of the self-governing States are expeoted to <jiieet in .London in April next, and the Home Government has decided not to veto any subject of debate. Neither the commercial question nor any other issue in which the Mother Country, the oolonies and India may be jointly interested will be deleted from the agenda paper. The whole sphere of constitutional, economic and military policy will be passed in review. "The statesmen," says the Daily Telegraph, "will confer across this memorable Round Table upon terms of complete equality. None will sit upon a dais and none below the salt." It will, incidentally, be the

first occasion on which the voioe o' ludio will be added to the counsels of aa assembly by far the most authoritative in its composition, and the most critical in its proceedings, which has ever met together to deliberate and advise upon the best means of promoting the unity and development of the King's dominions. It is anticipated that the three main subjeots around which the deliberations of the Conference will centre, are counsel, defence and commerce. The most vital requirement-, according to the Telegraph, is the creation of a sort, of permanent Imperial Cabinet, which j ■will enlist the energies and resources of every part of the King's j dominions for the preservation and advancement of the whole. "Our most imperative the Telegraph continues, "is to fill up the waste places under the flag. We have a superfluity of acres and an insufficiency of men. At present half our emigrant flow to foreign territory, because we offer them no inducement to settle under the flag. A British settler who renounces all ties with the Home Country, and i exploits the soil of Argentina or the United States, enjoys precisely the same advantages in our markets as an emigrant who settles in Australia or Canada, who remains a subject of the King, who is ready to spring to the defence of the flag in an hour of crisis, who purchases many times the amount of British goods bought by an Amerioan citizen or a German subject, and who already makes special arrangements, and is willing to extend them, for the support of British industry against foreign competition." It is in the discussion of this and kindred subjeots that the Conference is expected to prove that it is not a provincial oongress, but a council of nations. The delegates will be unfettered in disoussioa, aud it is confidently anticipated that the Conference will do much to improve the already admirable understanding which exists between the Mother Country and her children.