BRITISH FEDERATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10136, 5 November 1910, Page 4

BRITISH FEDERATION.

Writing in tne "Contemporary Review" on "Nationalism and Nationality" in Ireiand, Colonel Pilkington urges that, with the Imperial Parliament burdened as it is with purely local business, as well as with great national affairs, the federalizing of the United Kingdom must in time become a necessity. As Ireland will not be content without control of its local interests, he would begin the federal movement with country. He would reserve for the central authority control of the armed forces, the regulation of foreign relations, of shipping, Customs, post and telegraphs—in short, all the chief national services and interests which in Australia was entrusted to the Commonwealth. This federal scheme is the ultimate goal to which Colonel Pilkington would have Imperial statesmen direct their eyes, making everything done towards self-govern-ment in Ireland subordinate to such a general plan, although the whole scheme might not be brought into being for a very long time. At the sametime, he confesses that an immense amount of careful investigation work must precede the grant of even so limited a Home Rule to Ireland. "It would," he says, "pass the wit of man to devise any scheme of Home Rule at once final and to be applied at a single step which would not either ruin Ireland financially or involve monetary sacrifice on the part of the kingdom too stupendous to be considered seriously."