EMPIRE’S RALLY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1939, Page 5

EMPIRE’S RALLY

PHENOMENON REPEATS ITSELF. Britain's ill-wishers abroad were astonished by the Empire's rally to the Mother Country in 1914. They hod the phenomenon repeat itself with still more emphasis a quarter of a century later. says the London "Observer." Much water has flowed under the bridges. The Statute of Westminster has passed—making the Dominions entirely autonomous communities over whose action Great. Britain lias no control whatever. Canada. Australia. New Zealand and South Africa were all at perfect liberty to treat the present conflict as no concern of theirs. 'I hey might, easily have developed a ‘sacred egoism" indilTercnt to the ties ol blood and blind to the monitions of sagacity. In actuality, what has been found to happen is precisely the reverse. Iho sanse of concord in the present crisis of fate is even stronger and more unhesitating than in the last. The cement of freedom binds the Empire closer than all the technique of Constitutions. Instinct and reflection have led our kinsmen to identical conclusions, Ihex have perceived that the Mother Country’s cause is in a most urgent and practical sense their own. The Nazi philosophy denies any rights whatever to communities that cannot vindicate' themselves by overwhelming force. H its claims wore not challenged and checked, every nation of smaller dimensions would eventually be converted into its helot. And in these days the idea that distance confers safety is quite illusory.