The Colonial Question
The problem of the future of colonies continues to be canvassed very usefully and suggestively by a variety of authorities. Reference was made here last week to Lord Hailey's speech at Toronto, in which he advocated the institution of regional councils to advise on the administration of the colonies, under whatever flag, lying in the same area. Now the Daily Mail has reproduced an article on the subject contributed by General Smuts to the American magazine Life. The South African Prime Minister, who, it must be remembered, was the principal architect of the mandate system, reminds Americans pertinently that the British Empire today must be thought of in terms not of a mother-country which denied freedom to American colonists a hundred and seventy-five years ago but of a mother-country which spontaneously conferred freedom on the conquered Boers thirty-eight years ago. The British colonies today cannot be spoken of or thought of en masse. They consist of the widest possible variety of territories in very different stages of development, all of them on the road towards self-government, but some with but a short stretch to travel and others with still a long one. The Geaeral raises in a single paragraph an issue of paramount importance on which it would be premature to say much, but disastrous not to be thinking much, when he observes that the post-war world will be "a world in which colonies situated on the strategic routes of the world will become important items in a programme of general security against war." It is unlikely that those particular colonies at any rate will remain under purely national control, though it may well be best for them to remain under national administration. It is to be hoped that the Colonial Office under its new chief is giving urgent attention to these and kindred matters. This country must have its own constructive proposals in complete readiness when the time comes unless it is to be faced with the much less congenial alternative of having to criticise or reject some other nation's plan for British' colonies.
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