Across the Seven Seas

The Empire in th.^ New Era. By L. S. Amery. (Arnold. 15s.)

COLLECTIONS of speeches republished in book form are apt to be heavy reading to all but the student ; not so Mr. Amery's book of the 300 speeches he made in seven months on his tour round the Empire, to which Lord Balfour contributes a valuable part on the decisions of the last Imperial Conference in which he took so important a part. Mr. Amery set out on his 55,000 mile journey under the immediate inspiration of the Imperial Conference of 1926 and the task he set himself and in which he has succeeded well, was that of elucidating to audiences in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada some of the findings of the Imperial Conference of 1926 and all that the recognition of absolute equality of status of the Mother Country and the Dominions implies.

Lord Balfour reminds us that the present British Empire is not only among the greatest of contemporary political facts ; it is also among the newest." Its greatest achievement is that it has reconciled the apparent opposites of a passion for independence with a readiness for co-operation. Lord Balfour tells us, when he was young, there were only two answers to the question of How is the unity of the British Empire to be preserved ? The components might either formally bind themselves together in a federal system or they might formally separate ; the long succession of events which led up to the findings of the Imperial Conference of 1926 show that there is a third policy : the policy of the new era of free co-operation, which has given to the self-governing portions of the Empire " unalterable equality of status."

Mr. Amery's book should form part of the equipment of all who are about to embark on an Imperial grand tour, but it should also be read by all stay-at-homes interested in the Empire. As we follow him through old-world Cape Province, via the Dutch South African University town of Stellenbosch to up-to-date Johannesburg, then across the great lonely expanses of the Southern Indian Ocean to Australia and New Zealand and thence across the Pacific to Canada and so across the Prairie Provinces to Eastern Canada and thence across the Atlantic home, we get a wonderful bird's-eye view of the British Empire as it exists to-day. We seem to bask again in those sunny skies under the Southern Cross. No one who has followed Mr. Amery's progress, since he first took office at Downing Street as Colonial Secretary, can fail to be impressed by the growth in his mental outlook and increased breadth of his vision.

In going for a trip of seven months around the Empire, Mr. Amery has set an example which all future Secretaries of State for the Dominions will have to follow ; true, the setting for their journeys will probably not be so auspicious, for nothing can happen to the Empire of quite such out- standing importance as the recognition of equality of status— an event which has been described as the most important happening since the publication of the Durham Report ninety years ago. In a speech to the Canadian Club at Victoria, B.C., Mr. Amery thus described the freedom which Canada enjoys as a Dominion within the British Commonwealth. ".!' There is no power of Government, no function of national life, internal or external, that Canada is not as free to exercise as Great Britain is free to exercise it. Cs,nada is no more subordinate to Great Britain than Great Britain is subordinate to Canada.".

Those who recognize hoUr strong local patriotism is in South Africa and in Quebec Province will appreciate the tact and erudition displayed by the Colonial Secretary in starting la's :speech to the South African born Dutch students at Stellen- bosch in Afrikaans and in addressing the members of the Canadian Club at Quebec in French. Mr. Amery set off on his

iMperial argosy with certain advantages. He had visited the Dominions before and he had served a long apprenticeship is a journalist and was thus enabled to establish cordial relations with the press. It says much for his tact that during the whole of the tour he made no false steps. There are few other statesmen who could have delivered three hundred addresses to every type of audience, up and down the British Commom wealth, without treading on some corns.

• - Mr. Amery is a keen mountaineer, and as he returned to iVellington iftei a week pet ankh-4 the klonfg-of the-ifik

Zealand Alps in the Southern Island, we feel the glow in hl words. " A treasure house of beauty and a playground -unequalled anywhere in the world," he called it and he told his hearers that it seemed to him that they hardly realized the enormous asset nature had endowed them with. To various audiences, Mr. Amery had much to say on the different patriotisms pertaining to citizenship of the British Common. wealth. Loyalty to the land of one's birth should not in any way conflict with a larger patriotism to the Commonwealth as a whole. As Lord Balfour reminds us, " the undergraduate's liking for his University is increased by his liking for his college." Dominion patriotism may be supported and enriched by Imperial patriotism, but it need never be impaired by it. The late Lord Grey, as Governor-General, used to say : " The Empire is my country ; Canada is my home." In talking to South African students Mr. Amery said :-

" Why should not South Africans, instead of talking of the British Empire, think of it as South Africa's Empire, as the expansion, the enhancement of South Africa's own national life ; as the increase of opportunities for her ; the opportunity to widen, perhaps her actual territorial frontiers in course of time—if she can win over the Protectorates and Southern Rhodesia or get countries, even further afield to come within the compass of her territories— but even more as something which gives to South Africa not merely the opportunity of enlarging her territories, not merely greater security and peace, not merely greater trade, but a greater opportunity of growing to her full stature as a great nation, a nation with a wide field of activity to work in, with a high sense of her mission and of her responsibility."

To us Mr. Amery's tribute to the work of the Durham Report is of special interest, for in the drawing-up of that historic document, Lord Durham was largely helped by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, for the spreading of whose ideas on Empire matters, the columns of the Spectator under Rintoul were always open.

In the concluding speech of his tour at St. John, New Brunswick, Mr. Amery dealt with the breaking up of the first British Empire. When the thirteen colonies broke away from the Mother Country, he said they believed that they " as a young and progressive community of the future," were severing the shackles that bound them " to a decadent and reactionary monarchy." Yet at that very moment the constitution of Britain was undergoing a profound change.

We in the Old Country were on the eve of the greatest discovery of British political genius, "the discovery of what we know to-day as responsible self-government, that form of govern- ment which preserves the efficiency of the executive, but by bringing it into intimate touch with Parliament keeps it closely associated with the wishes and desires of Parliament and of the nation, and which, by doing so, gives to Parliament and to the whole electorate a sense of responsibility, a reali- zation that laws have not only to be passed but to be administered." It is for that reason that many constitutional students regard the British political system as superior to that of the United States.

As Mr. Amery says :--

" If responsible government had existed before 1775, if someone with the vision of Lord Durham could have said : ' Put the responsibility on the Colonies themselves, let them deal with their frontier problems, do not treat their administration as a part of British Executive responsibility, make them a responsible community,' they would have faced their problems, they would not have refused to take up their burdens, and I do not think they would have ever been separated from the Mother Country. " Certainly once that solution was found, the ever-increasing growth of freedom and responsibility has only joined Canada and the other British Dominions more closely to the Mother Country and to each other. That responsibility found a solution, too, for another problem—that of uniting scattered colonies into greater nations. Under the old system it was apparently impossible for the Americans to become a nation without breaking off, but we have seen since then within the British Empire groups of Colonies, Canada being. the first, becoming great nations without in any degree impairing the sense of a wider patriotism and a wider interest uniting them to the rest of the British Commonwealth."

We hope that a copy of this book will be handed to all the newcomers on the staff of the Dominions Office. There are few Empire problems it does not deal, with. We are not sure that we follow Mr. Amery in all his economic reasonings, but with the general purpose of the book which was to show that complete freedom and equal status does not make for the disruption of the Empire we are in entire aureement.