SIR JOSEPH WARD'S SPEECH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10190, 16 March 1911, Page 5

SIR JOSEPH WARD'S SPEECH.

COMMENTED ON AT HOME

(Received Last Night, 11.10 o'clock.)

LONDON, March 15

A, number, of provincial -newspapers favourably comment upon Sir Joseph "Ward's speech. The Leeds Mercury, a Liberal organ, declares that New Zealand was always to the forefront with freshening ideas. The time is approaching, it says, when it will be necessary to establish an Imperial body to administer the armed forces of the Crown.

The Yorkshire Observer, in a critical artical, states that Sir Joseph Ward's proposal for an Imperial War Parliament to make a circuit of the capitals of the Empire, suggests Macauley's ' 'New Zealander on the ruins of London Bridge." Nevertheless, Britain's population ensured her dominant authority for many years. The Manchester Courier says that New Zealand, with a population the size of Lancashire, made sacrifice for the Empire unmatched throughout the Dominions. The spirit of the Labour Party controlling the politics of the Antipodes was very different to that of the Labourites in the Motherland, who regarded the defence of the country as a form of military lunacy. (Received Last Night, 11.20 o'clock.)

' LONDON, March 15

The Times, in an article, says it is not' surprised' 1 at Sir Wilfrid Laurier's agitation for Canada's liberation :.s rpm '-the^'Mgtte tiion" treaties, in order to seek racili.ties to, enter into an.arrangement with other Dominions or foreign countries offering satisfactory reciprocal terms. This suggests the recognition of the imperative need for adequate machinery tp, deal with Imperial questions. Unless machinery was provided from different portions of the/Empire, there was a danger of the adoption of partial solutions, which would possibly be difficult to natually reconcile. Though the time was perhaps.not ripe for such a- comprehensive scheme as Sir Joseph Ward's, the matter engaged the growing attention of .the Motherland.