CO129-561-7 Hong Kong University 4-1-1937 - 22-9-1937 — Page 49

The Hong Kong Sunday Herald

HONG KONG, SUNDAY, JUNE 13, 1937

Pacific Relations

46B

THE

THE visit of Mr. Carter last week to address the Rotary Club and the League of Nations Society on behalf of the Institute of Pacific Relations passed with almost as little comment as the discussion at the Imperial Conference raised by the Prime Minis- ter of Australia on the suggestion of a Pacific Pact, but the sub- jects discussed dovetail into each other, and are just those on which Hong Kong might be expected to form and express opinions worthy of consideration. Mr. Carter told us that the Institute had come to the conclusion that it was impossible to understand the clash of national ambitions without knowing the internal condi- tions of the countries concerned, and as that is just what we find elsewhere and in history there is no reason why it should not be accepted as the starting point of any study of the Oriental pro- blem. We may also accept his statement that the whole value of such discussions as were recently held at the Yosemite Valley convention lay in the fact that none of the delegates were official representatives. How could it be otherwise? Every Govern- ment is the resultant of traditions and interests that are opposed to each other, but which have to be combined into at least the semblance of unity, of which the official view is the organ. A student is concerned with the forces and their growing or fading ascendancy. Our visitor, as was natural to one who was a stranger to Hong Kong, looked to the university to take up the impartial study of local and South China conditions, such as overcrowding, excessive rents, and all the other causes of dis- content and unrest. Nobody felt inclined to tell him that so far from encouraging such unpopular investigations they would be regarded as entirely improper. One of the things we have to secure or safeguard in Hong Kong is the candour of men like the late Sir Charles Booth's enquiry into the East End of London, or Seebohm Rowntree's survey of York.

The course of the discussions in London has revealed a rather unexpected trend, at least it would be unexpected to those who have not noted how often political changes have the opposite effect to what their proposers intended. Ever since Parliaments were established in the larger Colonies now called Dominions they have been to all intents and purposes self-governing, while pro- fessedly being still subject to the control of the Imperial Parlia- ment. The facade did not correspond with the structure. In re- turn for the purely nominal paramountcy the British taxpayer was expected to carry almost the whole cost of defence. Now that they are nominally independent though still under the pro- tection of the Imperial Navy, they are logically bound to take the task of local defence more seriously. Co-ordination is substituted for subordination. To the outside world it is not easy to see any difference, because the change is not sudden. But it will grow, and with the decentralisation of responsibility will grow the strength of the Empire. From the beginning local forces en- tirely under Colonial control adopted the "Queen's Regulations" as the basis of their discipline, and so were able to work together in wartime. There will now be a regular interchange of ideas, and a common purpose. The access to responsible negotiations at Geneva and London and foreign capitals has opened up new vistas and a new appreciation of perils that have préviously only been an anxiety to the Foreign Office. The nett result has not been any inclination towards further separation, but an increase of the influence of the Home Government, without the help of which the bigger problems would clearly be insoluble. Australia, for example, seems to have acquired a new appreciation of the danger of keeping that enormous Northern Territory vacant in face of the teeming millions of the other Pacific States. Some- thing has to be done to relieve the barren exclusiveness of the La- bour Immigration policy, even in Australian interests. The sug- gestion of Mr. Lyons that there should be some new "Pacific Pact” would have no more effect than the other Pacts of which we have already had too many. It could only provide for things being left as they are, and as long as people are content with things as they are there is no need to have a Pact.