A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
IT is surprising that so little attention should have been paid to Mr. Mackenzie King's visit to Herr Hitler on Tuesday —compared, for example, to the publicity lavished on Mr. Lansbury's visit last April. What the Fiihrer said to the Prime Minister of Canada and what the Prime Minister of Canada said to the Fiihrer, of course, remains unreported, but Mr. Mackenzie King is a man of considerable political wisdom and realism, and it would be surprising if he did not make it clear to Herr Hitler that the British Dominions were very far from disinteresting themselves in anything that might happen in Europe. It is one thing to say that the Dominions will in no circumstances commit themselves to intervening in a European war, and quite another to say that they will in no circumstances intervene. The Dominions, so far as I know, have never said that, and it would be a mistake for anyone to take it for granted. The Imperial Conference has been a great success psychologically. A member of it who is particularly well qualified to judge said this week that after a series of conferences in which emphasis was laid primarily on the individual Dominions as units we seemed now to be passing into an era in which the emphasis would be on the Commonwealth as a whole. Mr. Mackenzie King, who is known to have been well satisfied with the Conference, would, I think, share that view, and it is all to the good if he has expressed it to Herr Hitler. The impression that the Dominions have " gone isolationist " is inaccurate, and it is a pity it should be given currency.
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