Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4, 1911. THE COLONIAL OFFICE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10159, 4 January 1911, Page 4

Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4, 1911. THE COLONIAL OFFICE.

The cable -intimated some, weeks back that important changes < were contemplated, in the Colonial' Office.-; The-details of these changes' ■■ have not yet been made knovyri, and it can only -be assumed that their announcement has been delayed in consequence of the elections. - The London Daily '•■ Telegraphy dealing with the subject, says:—"Before long the Colonial' Office 'will be remodelled upon new lines, the main feature of which will be a sharp distinction between the great , self-gov-erning Dominions and \ what are known as the Crown Colonies. Lord Crewe himself foreshadowed this change six months ago, when, at a dinner given to Sir George Reid, he isaid he thought "the time 1 would it might come, at no very distant date—when the double posi-" tion of Secretary of the' ; might have to be reconsidered, with a-view to some further arrangement being entered into by which the care of matters relating to the. Dominions might be entrusted to one official, and the care of the Crown Colonies and Protectorates - fb , another." ; ;The probabilities, therefore, would seem to point) to the creation of a totally ( new ship of State, whicfii woukt foevit-

ably shadow in importance and dignity .the existing-Secretaryship of State for the Colonies. Whatever title be given to the office, it mu3t obviously take rank, among the very loftiest offices of the State, for it would be Imperial in the highest degree, and the Dominions themselves would be quick to resent its being allotted to any but the very best men of either .political party. If this is the line on which reconstruction is to take place, a new and most romantic chapter will he added to the history of the British Colonial Office. How extraordinary that history is can best be shown by a brief retrospective glance. The office goes back just two hundred and fifty years, to 1660,, when a, separate 'Council of Foreign Plantations' was created by Letters Patent. The Foreign Plantations, of course, were the British Colonies, out of which, by an amazing chain of development, have evolved the great Overseas Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa." -