DOMINION STATUS
SIR.—I hav a mild quarrel with " Janus " for the following sentence from his Notebook, which, whatever its amiable intention in regard to India, would scarcely be read with much pleasure in the Dominions: . . there appears to be some feeling in India that it is an indignity for a country that aspires not merely to Dominion status but to com- plete independence to have its present inferiority underlined by the choice of a Governor from a Dominion."
Dominion status is complete independence—there is nothing, for exump!e, to prevent Canada leaving the Commonwealth if she wished to —the Dominions are sovereign States equal in every way with Great Britain, and as to underlining inferiority by choosing a Governor from a Dominion, well, the same might be said of Great Britain, which it is seldom remembered is by implication a Dominion like the others under the Statute of Westminster. I am afraid the political system least known to the people of this country is their own Empire.—Yours faithfully, 5 Palace Mansions, Kensington, W. 14. W. E. SIMNETF.
(" Janus " writes: I largely agree (and therefore cannot be quarrelled with). I was merely quoting the (erroneous) view which I gather pre- vails in India. Yet is Dominion status complete independence—when Canada cannot amend her own constitution except by a Bill carried through the British Parliamentfl
Previous page
