CROWN AND COMMONWEALTH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 943, 6 September 1957, Page 11

CROWN AND COMMONWEALTH

Sir-It is understandable that Mr R. M. Hutton-Potts, as a newspaper editor, sees the Commonwealth in terms of the day’s headlines and the printed word, but he over-rates the importance of Ministerial communiques and the

prepared speeches of Royalty as factors bearing on what he calls the "continued existence" of the Commonwealth. The British Commonwealth and Empire has been established on firmer foundations than this: on deeds, not words, For centuries, men and women have worked with courage and vision to build a unique world-wide association of some 600 million people. Problems thére are, and stresses and strains, natural enough in the development of this vast multiracial community. But the problems are being solved and the stresses are being borne because the countries of the Commonwealth and Empire are linked together in numberless ways: by a common loyalty to the Crown and all that it stands for, by ties of kinship, communications, trade and commerce, by the intricate patterns of social, economic and political relationships which have become part of the enduring fabric of life in many lands. Those of us who have experienced something of the spirit and substance of the Commonwealth in peace and wat have no doubts about its "continued existence" as a world Power. Whatever its faults, the British Commonwealth has done more for the peace and progress of mankind than any other association of peoples in history. Today, as individual nations ate "growing up" within the’ Commonwealth, new and powerful forces are being brought to bear on the age-old problems of disease, ignorance and hunger, the basic causes of war. In international relations the Commonwealth and Empire is a vital Third Force, an area of stability where the conflicting policies of the United States and Soviet Russia may be modified and controlled until they no longer menace the peace of the world.

F.

C.

(Sumner).