EMPIRE RELATIONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1938, Page 7

EMPIRE RELATIONS

CONFERENCE IN NEW SOUTH WALES. MANY DISTINGUISHED DELEGATES. One hundred and forty delegates from Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, South Africa, India, New Zealand and Newfoundland will attend the British Commonwealth. Relations Conference, to be held in New South .Wales from September 3 to September 17. Distinguished professors from all the Australian States will attend, . and oversea visitors will include many leading educationists and representatives of traditional institutions • and societies in Britain and throughout the Empire. 1 To defray the cost, the Carnegie Trust has given £5OOO, the Rhodes Trust £1250, and financial assistance has been received from the Federal and New South Wales Governments. ■ With the arrival of many distinguished visitors from overseas, the conference is ..expected to provide a stimulus to the study in Australia of Imperial affairs. The deliberations of the conference, the most important Imperial gathering held in Australia, will be unofficial and no resolutions will be passed. The effects of the discussions, however, are likely to be far-reaching because the delegates are all leaders of opinion in their particular spheres. Many of them are unofficial expert advisers of their respective Governments. The Royal Institute of International Affairs was established in 1920 as a permanent organisation to serve as a clearing-house of information, and the pending conference is to be held under the auspices of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, the Australian affiliated body. The agenda includes consideration of the interests of individual nations of the British Commonwealth arising out of geographical and strategic position, and basic economic influences. The economic aspect of external policies, a review. of national outlooks, future economic development, and the character of co-operation in foreign policy and defence will also be considered. The delegates will discuss only disadvantages in the existing British Commonwealth association as an embarrassment in the conduct of foreign policy and as a restriction on co-oper-ation with non-British nations. They will deal with the attitude toward the League of Nations and the problem of neutrality, defence requirements, and the existing trends of national policy, whether toward greater national or imperial self-sufficiency or toward closer economic relations with other member countries of the British Commonwealth or with foreign countries. Tariffs, quotas, subsidies and mostfavoured nation policy will be debated, and also the manner in which British Commonwealth co-operation in economic affairs may help in improving international relations. The possibilities of co-operation or agreed external policy in regard to special regions or topics will be considered, such as for Europe, the Mediter-ranean-Red Sea route and Africa; the Far East and the Pacific; the United States; mandates and the colonial question. Finally the delegates will ask whether there emerges from the discussions any fresh conception of the British Commonwealth arising from a reassessment of historical and constitutional factors in the light of.present interest and national composition.