General Smuts, in a speech before the South African Parliament said:

"The Dominions felt very strongly that if there was to be a League of Nations in which the nations were to be equally represented, then that League should include the British Dominions. They were determined to see that that recognition was given to us but they were equally anxious to see that nothing was done which would loosen the ties which bound together the British Empire."

Being signatories to the League and Covenant, Canada and the other British Dominions become constituents in the Assembly of the League, but there was doubt expressed as to their being entitled to have representatives on the Council as were small sovereign states who signed the League Covenant. To clear this up, Sir Robert Borden secured the signatures of President Wilson, Premier Clemenceau and Premier Lloyd George to the following interpretation:

"The question having been raised as to the meaning of Article 4 of the League of Nations Covenant, we have been requested by Sir Robert Borden to state whether we concur in his view that upon the true construction of the first and second paragraphs of that article, representatives of the self-governing dominions of the British Empire may be selected or named as members of the Council. We have no hesitancy in expressing our entire concurrence in this view. If there were any doubt, it would be entirely removed by the fact that the articles are not subject to a narrow or technical construction."

On the part of the United States the League and Covenant could be made valid only by the agreement of the President and the ratification of the Senate, but it is submitted that as to the President is entrusted the power of dealing with foreign states, when he consented to the admission of the Dominion delegates into the Conference at Versailles, and when he signed the interpretation mentioned, he committed the United States to the recognition of the Dominions in the League of Nations, and whatever action the Senate may take, it cannot withdraw the recognition given the President of the autonomous status of the Dominions.

Empire Constitution

Within the British Empire the United Kingdom and the Dominions are enfolded, and as the constitution of those Dominions enlarged the constitution of the Empire responded with easy adjustments. Some of these I have already mentioned, so pass to some of the later developments.

The Colonial Conference, 1907, provided for a quadrennial imperial conference. At the first of those the Prime Minister of New Zealand proposed that there should be for the Empire an elective Chamber with legislative and executive powers. This was refused by Mr. Asquith who said: "It would impair if not destroy the authority of the United Kingdom in such grave matters as the conduct of foreign policy, the conclusion of treaties, the declaration and maintenance of peace and the declaration of war .which are now in the hands of the (United Kingdom) government subject to its responsibility to the (United Kingdom) Parliament. That authority cannot be shared."

At the Imperial Conference, 1917, India with the consent of all was represented.

Of the 23 of its published resolutions, one dealt with the Constitutional question and the admission of India to all future Imperial Conferences was recommended and it provided:

"The Imperial War Conference are of the opinion that the readjustment of the constitutional relations of component parts of the Empire is too important and intricate a subject to be dealt with during the war, and that it should form the subject of a special Imperial Conference to be summoned as soon as possible after the cessation of hostilities.

"They deem it their duty, however, to place on record their view that any such readjustment

should recognize the right of the Dominions and India to an adequate voice in foreign policy and in foreign relations, and should provide effective arrangements for continuous consultation in all important matters of common Imperial concern, and for such necessary concerted action, founded on consultation, as the several governments may determine." (Resolution IX).

Out of this and the necessities of the war there evolved an Imperial Cabinet which is to meet annually to confer about foreign policy and matters connected therewith and come to decisions in regard to them which, subject to the control of their own parliaments, they (i.e., the "responsible heads of the Governments of the Empire") will then severally execute.

Thus in a few years the converse of Mr. Asquith's view is being transmutted into a political fact.

It must be noticed however that the Imperial Cabinet has no power to carry its decisions into effect. The participating governments are expected to do that, and no doubt ordinarily will.

Will this policy of an Imperial Conference and an Imperial Cabinet develop into an organic union of the self-governing

nations and India with a common representative body empowered to legislate and an executive council responsible to that body of elected representatives, or into a league of British nations?

In 1918, to make the Imperial Cabinet more efficient, this understanding was arrived at:

"That the Dominions shall be represented, each by a Minister permanently stationed in London, and that the Imperial War Cabinet shall meet from time to time with these Ministers as members of it.

as continuous for the future,

"To make consultation and intimate as possible the Prime Ministers of the Dominions, as members of the Imperial War Cabinet, shall have the right to communicate on matters of Cabinet importance direct with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom whenever they see fit to do so.'

In 1919 neither the Imperial Conference nor Cabinet met except in the form of a British Empire delegation in Paris. You are conversant with the proceedings there. The eventuality was that the British Empire's acquiescence in the treaty was acknowledged by the signatures of Great Britain's Ministers and by the Ministers and statesmen of the Dominions and India.

The signature of the Dominion plenipotentiary however was not considered as equivalent to simply tendering advice to ratify in the case of the Dominions when parliamentary ratification was deemed necessary in England. It was contended that the British and Dominion parliaments should be placed on an equality. This necessitated the calling of a special session of the Canadian parliament and approval was thus given for the treaty making power of the Crown is subordinate to the sovereignty of parliament and the King could not enter into an international obligation which would affect the personal or property rights of the people without parliamentary sanction and in so far as the peace treaty trenched upon the rights of the Dominions, confirmatory action on the part of their parliaments was necessary to carry the treaty into effect within the Dominions. Moreover, although the King can undoubtedly by prerogative right bind the whole Empire by a declaration of war or by the conclusion of peace, he is under the political necessity of consulting his duly constituted advisers, and it was maintained that while in respect of the United Kingdom he should consult the Cabinet of the United Kingdom, in respect of Dominion interests, their executives should advise him. In other words, while the Kingship is undivided, he has in respect of the interests of the several nations composing the British Empire, to be advised by their respective Executive Councils. In international law, the Empire has a

unitary existence. Consequently, though the Dominions be original members of the League of Nations, they were not parties to the Treaty of Versailles because they had not been recognized in international law as sovereign states. As a political fact, the legislative supremacy of the British Parliament over the Dominions has disappeared, and the theory of the executive unity of the Empire is also commencing to vanish. While the Peace Conference adhered to the principle of the unity of the Empire for the purpose of war and peace, they acceded to the demands of the Dominions for separate representation in the League to guard the interests of those nations.

What the Constitutional Conference of 1921 may do toward the creation of a closer union of the component nations of the Empire one may not predict. Any endeavour to create oneness by centralized authority or to place the straight jacket of a written constitution upon the growing bodies and active limbs of developing nations might result not in unity but separation, not in harmony but in discord. In addition to whatever bonds there now exist whether of kinship or association or langguage or common traditions or similarity in administration of justice, in law making and in government or inter-trading, and protection from external enemies, there is a unity of mind and spirit in which we should live and move and have our being as a whole, of which spirit the King is the symbol or adumbration.

As stated in the British North America Act, Canada became federally united under the Crown of the United Kingdom. Undoubtedly that does not mean under the King as advised by the Cabinet of the United Kingdom save in respect of those things reserved for consideration by the Imperial Government under the Act, such as disallowance, for as to general Canadian affairs the Federal and Provincial representatives of the Crown are advised by their respective cabinets. It has a significance far beyond a person acting constitutionally on such advice. In different periods of British history the Crown had different significations. In early England the tribal head was the hereditary senior, but pressing circumstances soon required the wisest man and he was selected as supreme executive authority and called the King or knowing person, who was given property to support him in his administrative and military work. As times advanced, this did not give sufficient supply and in about 1400, the reign of Henry IV, Parliament stipulated that reforms should be made as a condition of granting further supplies. This form of kingship ceased when the people, exhausted by the War of the Roses, the war of disputed succession, permitted absolutism to take root under the capable but ruthless Henry VII, to flourish under subsequent Tudors and to go to excess under the Stuarts. When James II was expelled, a new style of Royal headship developed. William III was chosen by parliament

though not in the hereditary line. It became manifest he would leave no issue. So as to avoid disputed succession the Acts of Settlement were passed in 1713. Accordingly, George I came to the throne by the will of parliament. As he could not speak English he did not attend meetings of the executive council but acted perfunctorily on the advice of his ministers. George III attempted domination, had a subservient Cabinet, lost the American colonies, and his reason. It was during the period of the Georges that the supreme administrative authority of the King was put into commission, the peoples' Premier, and his selected ministers being the Commissioners. The kingship was rescued from mere pageantry by the personal character and virtues of Queen Victoria and her honoured successors. By their personal attractiveness, by their careful attention to their constitutional advisers, by their desire to be of the people, though in honour the highest, by their expressing and maintaining only the sentiments and aspirations of our British civilization, as evidenced by their changing the family name to Windsor, they have endeavoured as far as humanly possible to represent in personality what is absolute in legal theory that the "King can do no wrong." Thus they have endeared themselves to the people and thus they have become the symbol or the adumbration of that spirit and soul of the British-Anzac-Canadian civilization. Hence the great enthusiasm with which our capable and personally charming Edward Prince of Wales has been received not only by the peoples of the Dominions but of the United States.

It is that Empire spirit, that soul, that psychological entity which is to our physical senses represented by the King, or, in statutory words, by "the Crown of the United Kingdom" that holds so closely together the nations and peoples composing the Empire.

We Canadians have been enterprising in claiming national and international rights. Are we as eager and ready to perform the corresponding duties? We assert equality of nationhood in the Empire with the United Kingdom and accept the benefits but will we shoulder our share of the Empire burdens, will our attitude be provincial or parochial or will it be broad and imperial? The one is pusillanimous and dwarfing, the other demands enterprise and industry, service and sacrifice, but leads to prosperity and to greatness.

When we speak of Empire, we do not think of an Imperium; none such exists, but rather of Empire as defined by Burke in his speech on conciliation with America:

"The aggregate of many states under one common head whether that head be a monarch or a president of a Republic."

We are of the British Empire an autonomous nation in it.