The Imperial Conference has come and gone. It held its
first sitting on October 1st, and its last on November 8th. Perhaps the best of its innovations has been that of greatly increased publicity. A very full summary of its proceedings was issued immediately after the Conference closed, so that we have at any rate the basic facts before us by which the achievements of the Con- ference may be judged. Perhaps it would be too much to say that the Conference was summoned for one purpose (the consideration of inter-Imperial questions) and that it deliberated on another—the relations of the Empire with the rest of the world. But undoubtedly its great preoccupation has been an attempt to hammer out an Imperial foreign policy. By far the most important resolution that the Conference passed was on the European situation. It expressed the hope that the United States would join in a common inquiry into Germany's capacity to pay reparations, but it felt that in the event of this co-operation being impossible through Allied dissensions, "it would be desirable for the British Government to consider very carefully the alternative of summoning a conference itself in order to examine the financial and economic problem in its widest aspect."
Previous page
