The League of Nations

The Dominions, The Commonwealth, and the League

[Mr. Hall is a distinguished Australian publicist and part-author of The Comnsonwealth of Nations, the standard work on its subject. —En. Spectator.]

Ix the 'burst of excited comment that followed the silence that was maintained as the names of the newly elected members of the Council were read out in the Salle de In Reformation last September, one heard on all hands the words, " Canada elected." The writer's mind ran back instantly to a conversation some two months earlier in a train passing down from the high Sierras into the oven-like Sacramento Valley of California. Several well-known American supporters of the League were arguing strongly against the separate votes of the Dominions in the League. Zealous guardians of the League's integrity—and it has no more stern guardians than such Americans—they feared that the League would be menaced by the existence within it of groups such as the British Commonwealth. And now the Assembly after eight years' experience of Dominion repre- sentatives had shown conclusively what it thought of such fears by electing a Dominion to the Council.

The election of Canada to the Council settles once for all a controversy dating back to the Peace Conference. Were the Dominions in a position of legal equality or of inferiority in the League ? Those who held the second view pointed to the position of Great Britain on the Council, and argued that the Dominions were not really eligible for election to the Council since they were already represented there. Some words of Sir Austen Chamberlain in the Council last March, which seemed to support this view, caused murmuring in " autonomist" circles in Canada. But the election of Canada is conclusive against all the old arguments that a Dominion could not and would not be elected.

More important than this issue are two practical questions : how is the existence of a British Commonwealth group affecting the League ; and what is the effect of membership is the League on the British Commonwealth itself ?

Though some people may wish to minimize its importance, the fact of the existence of a British Commonwealth Group is as clear as daylight to anyone who comes to Geneva. Attention has, indeed, just been sharply drawn to it by the endorsement by the Imperial Conference of the inter se principle. This principle is that obligations accepted by the States of the British Commonwealth cannot—unless it is expressly so stated—be accepted as regulating the relations of these States to each other. This is a decisive statement of the fact that common membership of the League does not involve an abandonment of a distinct group existence.

The endorsement by the Imperial Conference of this principle throws a new light upon the old controversy as to the significance of the use of the term "British Empire" in the list of States at the end of the Covenant, and the grouping together under this heading of the names of the Dominions. These practices are now clearly seen to be not rather mean- ingless formulae, but on the contrary an express notification to the other Members that in accepting separate membership pf the, League, the States of the British Commonwealth keserved their constitutional union, and could not be called upon to take action incompatible with that union.

The record of the British Commonwealth in the League has shown that it does not form an "exclusive alliance" of the type against which the "Fourteen Points" gave warning. It is true that there are regular group meetings of the British and Dominion delegates prior to and during the course of League Conferences. But these meetings do not partake of the nature of a caucus where decisions binding upon the members are reached. Not infrequently in the last eight years, members of the British Commonwealth have voted bgainst one another at Geneva. But these disagreements have invariably been on minor questions. They have never extended to any important issues of foreign policy, and there is no evidence that their number and importance are increasing.

It is known, in fact, that at least one of the Dominions foremost; in the drawing up of the report of the last Imperial Conference has given express instructions to its delegates at Geneva to co-operate as closely as possible with Great Britain.

In all the major issues raised at Geneva, especially those relating to disarmament and security, and the scope of the League as regards so-called "domestic issues," the Dominions, India, and Great Britain have taken what is becoming recog- nized at Geneva as a definite British Empire point of view.

The Dominions have on occasion been willing that this common policy should be enunciated by the Foreign Secretary. The common agreement regarding the Protocol in 1924, and the common attitude of the mandatory States of the British Commonwealth towards the Questionnaire of the Permanent Mandates Commission in 1926, were so enunciated.

On the one important issue where agreement has not so far been reached—namely the question of the acceptance of the Optional Clause of the statute of the Permanent Court— the understanding was reached at the Imperial Conference " that none of the Governments would take any action without bringing up the matter for further discussion." It is not perhaps generally realized that even as regards the conclusion of agreements with foreign States drawn up at League Conferences, the form of diplomatic unity has generally been observed : the signatures being appended as a group under the heading " British Empire."

The existence of this Empire Group in the League has been an important educational process for the British Com- monwealth itself as well as for the rest of the world. Through contact with the world at Geneva the Dominions have come to realize as never before how alike they are to one another and to Great Britain in their fundamental processes of thought, and how deep their common interests really are. There is whole-hearted co-operation- between the members of the British Group. This is, in fact, the great cardinal feature of their foreign policies—the only feature of common policy which has been picked out for anything approaching enthusiastic endorsement in every report of the Imperial Conference since 1921. Yet it cannot be said that the British Commonwealth shows any sign of that ultimate fusion into the body of the League and loss of group identity that some of the critics of Dominion representation predicted.

Superficially there is a good deal to be said for the view that inter-imperial co-operation is less close in 1928 than it was in 1919 when the League was created. Meetings of the Imperial Conference have been less frequent than was then anticipated. In place of the " at least once a year " pro- gramme of 1918 there have been meetings only every three years. There have been the apparent divergences of policy; marked by Chanak, Lausanne, and Locarno. There has been the movement for the bringing of the Dominions into direct diplomatic relations with foreign Powers.

But over against these things must be put the practice of constant and direct communication between the Govern- ments of the British Commonwealth ; the frequent informal Imperial Conferences that take place at Geneva at every Assembly and every technical conference (and now partially at every Council meeting) ; the cordial and unmistakable agreement upon major issues of policy arising in the League ; and most important of all the new note of a hearty and spontaneous will to co-operate apparent in Canada, South Africa, and Ireland, since the report of the last Imperial Conference. That report—the unexciting, non-constitutional part of it which few people probably have read—is itself a witness of the distance which the Imperial Conference has travelled since pre-War days, in the direction not of divergence but of effective inter-imperial co-operation in matters of everyday concern. In fact, a comparison of the records of the last three pre-War Imperial Conferences with those of 1921, 1923, and 1926 shows that there is now in reality more serious and effective imperial co-operation, extending over a wider field, than there was even before the War.

H. DUNCAN HALL.