The communiqué issued at the end of the Commonwealth Prime
Ministers' conference might in most respects have been written before it began. All they did was to record substantial agreement on subjects which were known to be certain to come up. The friendly platitudes, however, were understatements: the Commonwealth Prime Ministers left with the impression that this was the most successful conference that they had ever had. Its success seems to have been very largely due to the skill with which the highly informal division into groups was managed and which greatly reduced the danger of clashes while giving no one the idea that differences were being suppressed or blurred over. The lesser unities, like that of the Commonwealth SEATO powers, were emphasised (it was clearly much easier for these countries for example to reach agreement on defence without Indian participation). In this atmosphere new friend- ships began to flower; everybody observed, for the first time, a genuine warmth between Sir Winston Churchill and Mr. Nehru, the links respectively with the USA and China in the discussion of Formosa. The hitherto downright attitude of Pakistan towards this question seemed to have been somewhat moderated and Mr. Mohammed Ali was less inclined to de- mand that China's bluff should be called. Mr. Menzies emerged less as a powerful advocate and more as an elder statesman commanding universal respect. Altogether, in ways to which communiquds cannot do justice, the occasion was something of a triumph.
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