NEWS OF THE WEEK
NOBODY need be deceived by the informality of the gathering of Dominion Prime Ministers which opened at to Downing Street on Monday into thinking that it is an unimportant milestone in Commonwealth history. The meetings of Prime Ministers in 1944 and 1946 were more valuable and had a more solid content than many an Imperial. Conference of pre-war days. Nor is the meeting robbed of all importance by the fact that the agenda is flexible, that acute inter-Dominion disputes will not be discussed, and that no decisions binding upon Dominion Governments will be taken. The plain fact that this may yet turn out to be the most important Common- wealth meeting ever held springs from quite different considerations. They are the recent and profound changes within the Commonwealth itself and the world circumstances in which the meeting takes place. It is not only that the representatives of the new Dominions of India, Pakistan and Ceylon are present for the first time at such a conference, and that their future relationship to the Commonwealth will be determined far more certainly by personal attitudes than by formal documents. Such fundamental questions as the link between the Commonwealth and Western Union can likewise only be settled by informal discussion, since both sides of the equation lack precise definition. A good start has been made. The atmosphere of the opening meetings was so unaffectedly cordial that the possibilities of a full and frank exchange of views were immediately enhanced. Even the misfortune that Mr. Mackenzie King was prevented at the last minute by ill-health from taking his place at the meeting was to a great extent retrieved by the quick decision that Mr. St. Laurent, the next Prime Minister of Canada, should fly to London. This is not, and could not be, an occasion on which treaties are signed and abrupt changes of policy are disclosed. It is an occasion on which the lightest touch on the helm can make vast changes in the long future course of the Commonwealth, and consequently of the world.
