EMPIRE THE PROTOTYPE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 June 1941, Page 6

EMPIRE THE PROTOTYPE

TWO GREAT DEMOCRATIC SYSTEMS. After the war paramount power must be shared by the two great democratic systems, the British Commonwealth- and the United States; but paramount moral influence will belong to the British Commonwealth, which dared and suffered alone in the cause of man, writes Lord Elton, in his new book, “Notebook in Wartime. Throughout the tempest it will have preserved, as in an ark. the secret of a free yet ordered society, the model which many nations once endeavoured to reproduce, few of them with success. When the war is over some of the nations which have followed that easier line of least resistance which leads back to the dark ages will wish to learn civilisation again from their first mistress. And for a world groping for some new principle of cohesion; the British Commonwealth will serve as pattern. In the diversity of its peo-I pies and their geographical dispersal it ■ is already the prototype of an inter- ■ national order. In its lack Oi formal. commitments it is a pattern for it. The I League of Nations was designed upon , "a priori" principles, in the classroom; | it was founded upon a pyramid oi mal paper commitments. Before a sho«.| was fired, al the first breath, of danger, it had ceased to exist. Nobooy designed the British Commonwealth., for. like all living organisms, it grew. Its members are bound to each oilier b_> i scarcely any formal obligations, yet under unparalleled _ stresses tlie invisible bonds have held. If we are wise after the war we shall be true to ourselves and see to it that. tins time, whatever attempts at a world, organisation may be essayed arc neit.iei hasty nor academic. Wc shall caieiuliy a-.e-a any preconceived institutional : r.ti.icwork. Instead of manufacturing - world order, we shall give it time grow.