Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 55, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1917 — Whole Empire to Take Part in War Council [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Whole Empire to Take Part in War Council

Representatives of British Dominions to Sit With Uoyd' , George’s*Advisers. WILL SHAPE FUTURE POLICY Everything Affecting Conduct of War and Negotiations for Peace Will Be Considered by Colonial - i Premiers Sitting With Inner War Board. London. —Vast changes for King George V’s far-fiung dominions, indeed for the whole world, are bound up in the great congress of the British empire to be held here. Representatives of the British empire’s leading elements have met before, but more us a matter of ceremony and form. This time they come to London to do things. They will consider and decide all important policies now at issue having to do both with present problems and with those which are expected to come up at the close of the couflict. In this unprecedented meeting, as in the several military and economic councils of the entente allies and even in the similar gatherings of the Teutonic nations and their allies, experience is being gained which will do much to further the world-wide co-op-eration now the goal of most construcJive. thinkers. Premier David Lloyd-George has promised that the representatives qf the dominions shall sit with the inner British war board of five members — not in the sense that a visitor is invited to sit beside a judge on the bench, but as voting equals. The Welsh leader’s far-seeing eye has discerned that in this way lies safety for Britain —that only by making the world-girdling empire an organization of peers can real co-opera-tion and the full development of British strength be attained. Will Sit in Council. Here are the men who will sit In tblK'Unposing COUnciT: For Great Britain: David Lloyd

George, premier; Justin Chamberlain, secretary of state for India; Walter Huinu Long, secretary of state for-the colonies. • For South Afriea: Gen. Jan Christian Smuts (serving In placc~tsriTg=mier Louis Botha). For Canada: Premier Sir Robert Borden. ~~

For New Zealand: (Premier William Ferguson Massey. For Australia: Premier William Morris Hughes. For India: Two members of the privy council, one a Hindu and one a Mohammedan. i What the council will consider was very clearly "stated hv Premie*: Lloyd. George Iff a statement to the Australian Universal * Cable service, a news syndicate In which th.e leading Antipodean newspapers are members. He said: c “This council will deal with all general questions affecting the war. The

prime ministers or their representatives will be members of the war council, and ..we. propose to arrange that all matters of first importance shall be considered at its meetings. “Nothing affecting the dominions, the conduct of the war or the negotiations for peace Will be excluded from the scope of its authority. There will, of course, be domestic questions which each part of the empire must settle for itself. Such domestic matters will be our only reservation. But we propose that everything else shall be, so to speak, on the table. Entitled to a Say. - “You do not suppose that our overseas! nations can raise apd place in the field containing a preponderant portion of their best manhood and not want to have a say, a real say, In determining the use to which they are to be put? That seems to us an impossible and undemocratic proposition!! “Up to the present we,have shouldered practically alone responsibility for the policy of the war. We now wish to know that in our measures for prosecuting the war to a finish, in our negotiations for peace and in tlys proto? lems arising from the war and following its close we shall be carrying out: a policy agreed to by the representatives of the entire empire, sitting together in plenary council. “Things can never be the same after the war as before it. Five democracies, all parts of one empire, cannot shed thefr blood and spend their treasure with a heroism and disregard

of cost beyond aU praise and in a common cause.without establishing a unity such as never existed until now.” Although the British empire now presents a united front to Jhe Teutons such a spirit of union has not always marked its histqry. / War has united the, empire; first, the Boer struggle, and, second, the present titanic conflict. . Were Object Lessons. The two wars Were object lessons for the provincial Londoners. In this war mort than q million fine soldiers have already left their homes to fight for their Mag ,ln France, in East Af"rica. in Mesopotamia, in Egypt afld on the Gallipoli peninsula. On the latter . spot they died by the. ten thousand In a hopeless attempt to take* impregnable positions. * The caliber of the colonial leaders who will come here is not inferior to that of the British leaders with whom they will confer. Perhaps the strongest and most interesting personality among them is Premier Hughes of Australia. ' When he visited England for the first time a year ago he impressed Englishmen deeply. Hughes weighs less than 100 pounds, has chronic dyspepsia, and shows about tern times as much energy as an ordinary 200-pound man Iq full health. He started life as a;t itinerant schoolmaster lfi Australia, carrying a pack about the country and teaching frontiersmen’s children. Then he opened up a little goneral store near the wharves in Sydney, became acquainted with the dock laborers and heade'd the trades union movement He rose rapidly to be a Labof member of the assembly of New South Wales, then a member of the Australian commonwealth parliament, then minister of external affairs, and finally premier in the. first Labor cabinet the nation had ever known. 7T v Some of the Others. T Premier Massey of New Zealand is an Irishman born, who west to the Antipodes when six years old, and was engaged In farming before turning to statesmanship. General Smuts was one of the best Boer leaders in the war against Great Britain 17 years ago. Today he is one of King George’s most loyal and energetic subjects—a wonderful tribute to the conciliatory ability of the British empire. Premier Botha, for whom he is a substitute at the imperial council table, is also a former famous Boer leader. Rnfhn cannot confe to London, partly

because he Is engrossed with a great scheme to solve the annoying” raceproblem in South Africa by laying out certain territories where the black men will be in control and barring the negroes from participation in public affairs in certain other districts. He also does not desire to leave because his wife is grtHrely 111.

William M. Hughes, Premier of Australia.

General Jan Christian Smuts.

Sir Robert Borden, Premier of Canada.