sea, while the danger would ever be present that to enforce their own ends the oversea representatives might take up a position similar to that of the Irish Nationalist Party. Embarrassment would also arise in separating Home from Imperial finance, seeing that both financial systems would come under the control of one Chancellor of the Exchequer, an arrangement which I do not think the oversea governments would ever entertain.

Moreover, no system of federation could be absolutely fair in which Imperial functions were exercised by what is, after all, merely the local Parliament of one of its constituent parts. The supreme governing body of the United States, being entirely removed from any local legislature, gives satisfaction to the whole. The same result would certainly not have been arrived at had the supreme government been vested in the legislature of any particular State, however well the founders of the Constitution had provided for the representation of the other States in that one legislature. Apply this reasoning to the proposal under review and it seems to me to need no further consideration.

A fourth proposition, and one that has been widely discussed, is the creation of a new Imperial Parliament, possessing full executive powers as to matters affecting the Empire as a whole, with a subordinate Parliament for the United Kingdom to deal with what may be called home affairs, a body chosen on an electoral basis but including in its personnel representatives of the self-governing communities as well as of the United Kingdom. Here, again, a primary difficulty in the formation of such a Parliament is to bring within the scope of its operation those parts of the Empire which do not now possess responsible government. Yet unless this end is secured the idea

of federal unity would not be attained. Lord Selborne, while admitting that whether or not we start with an Imperial Council as advocated by Lord Bryce, 'the development must end, if the Empire is to be preserved intact, in a Parliament of the Empire,' has not attempted to solve the problem. Lord Milner, an equally strong supporter of an Empire Parliament, suggests that the point might be met by giving those parts of the Empire that do not now enjoy responsible government, representation in a new Imperial Cabinet until the time comes when they have proved themselves capable of local autonomy and entitled to direct representation in the Imperial Parliament. Admittedly, objections would be raised to this course, but, in my opinion, if the suggested creation of a new Imperial Parliament were to be adopted Lord Milner's proposal is the best, if not the only way of meeting the difficulty.

Whether the new Imperial Parliament is to consist of two Chambers or one is another matter that its advocates do not appear to have thought out. Yet the question is one that cannot be avoided should the proposition itself be seriously considered. Again, many supporters of this reform in our Imperial Constitution desire to see the present Parliament at Westminster continue as the United Kingdom Parliament, and another, Parliament brought into being for the conduct of Imperial affairs. Others take the opposite view. Lord Milner, for instance, would create a new Parliament to deal with the local affairs of the United Kingdom, leaving the Parliament which has existed for over six hundred years greatly reduced in numbers, and elected by much larger constituencies, partly in the United Kingdom and partly in the Dominions, to deal with Imperial affairs, while still retaining the overriding power, which in strict Constitutional theory it pos

sesses to-day, of legislating on any subject for any part of the Empire. Lord Selborne puts the case even stronger. To him it is unthinkable that a Parliament of the Empire should be other than the lineal hereditary successor of the present Imperial Parliament. He cannot imagine an Imperial Parliament with limited Constitutional powers and a United Kingdom Parliament with sovereign powers. The limitations must be in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and the sovereign authority must rest with the new Parliament.

While there are objections which do not apply to the other method of procedure, no one can deny that there are certain great advantages in the plan outline by Lord Milner and endorsed by Lord Selborne. In the first place, as the Secretary of State for War points out, the new Imperial Parliament would stand in the same relation to all the local Parliaments, including that of the United Kingdom. They would all alike have been created by it. In the next place, the measures necessary to give full effect to the contemplated transformation need not be made all at once. He then goes on to say that 'the future Parliament of the United Kingdom would have precisely the same status and the same origin as the Parliaments of Canada and Australia.' As regards status I agree, but I am unable to follow the reasoning which leads him to a similar conclusion in the matter of origin. The Parliaments of Canada and Australia and he might have added, the Parliament of the Union of South Africa - had their origin in federal movements within their respective territories. Before, then, you can say that the future United Kingdom Parliament would have precisely the same origin as the federal Parliaments of the Dominions, you will have to reverse the happenings that have taken place in those coun

tries by the introduction of a scheme of devolution that would give to England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales separate legislatures empowered in each case to deal with what may be called purely local affairs. Such a scheme would undoubtedly be necessary if the point at issue were the relief of the present Imperial Parliament from the burden now cast upon it of dealing with the purely local affairs of the component parts of the United Kingdom, but it is quite unnecessary where the object in view is a division of the functions of the present Imperial Parliament so as to separate that portion of its work concerned with the local affairs of the United Kingdom from its duties as trustee of the whole Empire. The creation of a new Imperial Parliament charged only with the consideration of matters of Empire would at once bring about the desired division of work, and this would be the case whether the new Parliament be the lineal successor of the present Parliament at Westminster or a new body altogether.

III

Lastly, I come to the proposal of an Imperial Cabinet. Long ago it was suggested that to combine the Cabinets of the Empire would be a convenient as well as an effective form of Imperial federation. The suggestion, however, fell on deaf ears. Years afterwards the conscience of Downing Street awakened and a step in the direction indicated was taken by the creation of the Imperial Conference. But it has required a war, and the greatest of all wars, to give the original suggestion practical shape. This was done when the Prime Ministers of the Dominions were included in the Imperial War Cabinet, and the principle has since been extended by the addition of representatives from India and the

setting up of committees within the Imperial War Cabinet. Over one of these the Secretary of State for the Colonies presides, and in this way representation is given to those Colonies and Protectorates not possessing responsible government.

In the Imperial War Cabinet we have an Imperial body possessing executive powers, an end not attained by any other of the propositions that have been advanced for the federation of the Empire, except that of a new Imperial Parliament. Full representation is also given to all parts of the Empire. It appears, therefore, that in the Imperial War Cabinet we have reached a stage in Empire Government which removes those political limitations that have so long blocked the way to Imperial progress. The Dominions have at last assumed the position of partners. But are we to go back to the status quo when hostilities cease? On this point nothing appears to have been settled. All that the Resolution passed by the Imperial War Cabinet on July 30 provides is: "That in order to secure continuity in the work of the Imperial War Cabinet and a permanent means of consultation during the war (the italics are my own) on the more important questions of common interest, the Prime Minister of each Dominion has the right to nominate a Cabinet Minister, either as a resident or visitor in London, to represent him at meetings of the Imperial War Cabinet to be held regularly between the plenary sessions.' Nothing is said about what is to happen after the war. And yet the period of reconstruction, necessarily one extending over many years, is fraught with far-reaching results to the Empire as a whole.

The suggestion I would make is that, pending the inauguration of a more complete form of federation, the Imperial War Cabinet should continue

The Fortnightly Review

after the war as a permanent body to be styled the Imperial Cabinet. All that is necessary to bring this about is for the Dominions to appoint Ministers of Cabinet rank to reside in London for a term of years and endow them with plenipotentiary powers, except in such matters and on such occasions where time permits for consultation with the Dominion Cabinets, while obviously all questions of Imperial Finance would have to be decided by the local Parliaments. It may be said that the Imperial Cabinet will conflict with the duties now performed by the Governors-General. But their powers must be amended to suit the new situation, just as it has been decreed that the Prime Ministers of the Dominions, as members of the Imperial Cabinet, have the right of direct communication with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and vice versa, instead of passing all correspondence through the Secretary of State for the Colonies as hitherto has been the rule. Again, a very strict line, will have to be drawn between Imperial and domestic policy. For instance, any suggestion of submitting a question like the settlement of the Irish difficulty to the new Imperial Cabinet would, in my opinion, be ultra vires. Apparently Mr. Asquith and General Smuts do not take the same view, but I think I am correct in saying that the view I express is that of the majority of the Imperial War Cabinet.

But after all, these are details. The essential fact to bear in mind is, that by continuing the Imperial War Cabinet with its changed significance after the war is over we shall secure an Imperial Executive in which all parts of the Empire have an equal voice and an equal vote, a body actuated by one purpose and one purpose alone, the recognition, and the fullest recognition, of the vital principle of Empire.

THERE was never in this country a trace of enthusiasm for Allied military intervention in Russia. From bewildered acquiescence public opinion is now passing to critical questioning. None of us know much about these Russian expeditions, but there is one thing which all of us know. The original case for them has disappeared. The strategical argument for 'reconstituting the Russian front is obsolete to-day. If these expeditions continue they must now be defended frankly on the ground that it is our interest to destroy Bolshevism by force of arms. It is evident that the undertaking will not be the easiest in the world. None of our expeditions has prospered so far. On the Murman front we have done little more than hold the coast. The Archangel force, after an ambitious attempt to advance into the interior, has had to retire to its base. The Baku force withdrew, with dire consequences to the inhabitants. In Siberia there has been no advance in force beyond Lake Baikal, save by the Czecho-Slovaks, and they are now demanding their right to return to their homes. If the war against Bolshevism is going to continue, it is evident that it will have to start virtually from the beginning and on a considerable scale. The plan which seems to find favor is a march from Odessa to Moscow.

Meanwhile, some illusions are lost and some salutary experiences gained. The legend that all Russia was eagerly awaiting the invader, and that her manhood would 'fall in' when our bugles sounded, is now discarded. Some months ago the more active politicians of most of the many non-Bolshevik progressive parties were for interven

tion, and did call in the Allies though only, as they said, to fight the Germans. These parties were once the majority in Russia, though no one can say how strong they were then or are now. There is little doubt that many of them are now disillusioned. They do not desire foreign intervention in the internal affairs of Russia. To some extent, the more moderate Socialists have even rallied in recent weeks to Lenin's Government. They are not converts to Bolshevism, but they prefer native errors and excesses to foreign meddling. Such demand as there now is for foreign intervention comes mainly from the parties which speak for the small propertied class. All of them are now monarchists, and, all told, they were able to muster at most twelve votes in the ill-fated Constituent Assembly.

We argued from the first that the real choice in Russia lay between a Socialist régime (which need not be Bolshevik) based on peasant votes, and land-nationalization, and a monarchist régime, which could not be, even in name, democratic, since universal suffrage would always put an end to landed property. The event has justified our prediction. The Bolsheviki were always weakest in Siberia, for the simple reason that nearly every cultivator in those vast spaces owns land, and land enough. In the early days of intervention, a series of provisional governments existed in Siberia, none of them reactionary, some of them Moderate Socialist, some of them Progressive Coalition. The plan of intervention was, as we had supposed, to gather the late Constituent Assembly in Siberia, to constitute an administration based

reached the high figure of £5,000,000.

But if much has been accomplished, much remains to be done. And the question we have to ask ourselves is how the end is to be reached. In my opinion there is but one way, and that is by a change in the governance of the Empire. Until that change is made it cannot be truthfully said that we have done all we can to place ourselves in a position to combat successfully any further attempt that may be made on our integrity or to take our proper place with the Allied nations in securing, for all time, the peace of the world. Lord Milner put the case very clearly when, addressing the Conference between representatives of the Home and Dominion Parliaments in the summer of 1916 at the House of Commons, he said: 'One of the main arguments of those who, like myself, have advocated what is described as "an organic union" of the Empire, has been the necessity of such union in order to insure the maximum of effective cooperation between its different parts in resisting external attacks.' And he continued: "The resources of the British Empire, material and moral, if properly organized, are enormously greater than those of Germany. But neither in war nor in diplomacy is the British Empire able to make its weight felt as it ought to be. If it were, the war would have been over a year ago. Indeed, in my opinion, Germany would never have ventured to begin it.'

To pass on. It is not, I think, sufficiently recognized that we have within the Empire two opposing political systems. As regards internal affairs the Dominions have self-government in its most complete form, for although every Act passed by the Dominions is subject to the veto of the Crown, only on very rare occasions is that power exercised. On the other hand, in foreign affairs, in the great issues of peace and war, the

Dominions have hitherto been asked, one may almost say expected, to accept the ruling of the Imperial Parliament, an assembly in which they have neither voice nor vote. 'Very gradually, very temperately,' as Lord Milner tells us, 'the leading statesmen of the Dominions have been directing attention to the anomalies of this position.' I recall a dispatch written by the late Mr. Service when Prime Minister of Victoria in 1885. It ran thus: 'Australians may be deeply interested in the action, or, it may be, inaction of the Imperial authorities, but they have no voice, no vote, in those councils of the Empire to which Her Majesty's Ministers are responsible; in all matters in which the exercise of the Imperial authority has interests for them, that authority is to all intents and purposes an unqualified autocracy - on the one hand, we in Australia are under Constitutional government, on the other, under an antiquated autocracy or bureaucracy.'

Speaking in the Canadian House of Commons two years before the war, Sir Robert Borden used these words: 'It has been declared in the past, and even in recent years, that the responsibility for foreign policy would not be shared by Great Britain with the Dominions. In my humble opinion adherence to such a position would have but one, and that a most disastrous, result.' And Mr. Andrew Fisher, High Commissioner for the Commonwealth of Australia, expressed the same view in a somewhat different way when he observed: 'If I had stayed in Scotland I should have been able to heckle my member on questions of Imperial policy and to vote for or against him on that ground. I went to Australia. I have been Prime Minister. But all the time I had no say whatever about Imperial policy no say whatever. Now that can't go on. There must be some change.'

There is no longer any room in our