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SECRET.

I.

MEMORANDUM PREPARED BY THE SECRETARY TO THE COMMITTEE OF IMPERIAL DEFENCE AT THE REQUEST OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES.

THE Sub-Committee assembled to formulate questions connected with the naval and military defence of the Empire to be discussed at the Imperial Conference of 1911, desire to bring to the notice of the full Committee the question as to how far it is expedient or necessary explicitly to lay down-in documents to be officially laid before the forthcoming Imperial Conference-the precise nature of the obligations which, in the event of Great Britain becoming involved in a war, will bind the Self-Governing Dominions to belligerent action side by side with her.

2. This issue was incidentally raised in the course of a discussion on paragraph 3 of the draft of a Memorandum on the Report of Lord Hardinge's Sub-Committee on the Treatment of Neutral and Enemy Merchant Shipping in War (C.I.D. Paper 124-B) which had been prepared for the information of the representatives of the Dominions. The question evoked some discussion. The text of paragraph 3 (which gave rise to this discussion) is as follows :—

"It is desired at the outset to lay special stress on the fact that, although con- currence in the policy of His Majesty's Government involves executive action on the part of the Governments of the Dominions as regards the treatment of enemy and neutral shipping on the outbreak of war, it will not in any way restrict the freedom of those Governments to decide, when the occasion arises, whether their naval and military forces shall or shall not participate in hostilities."

3. It was pointed out by the Foreign Office representative that the above para- graph admitted by implication that, if Great Britain should unhappily be involved in a war, it would be open to the Self-Governing Dominions to adopt either a belligerent or a neutral attitude as to them seemed best, in the circumstances of the moment.

4. Sir Arthur Nicolson pointed out that the international status of the Self- Governing Dominions renders the adoption of such an attitude on their part out of the question. Each Dominion being an integral part of the British Empire must, so far as international relations are concerned, bear the consequences of the action of the Central Government, and the effect of a British declaration of war will therefore inevitably be to lay open every portion of the Empire to liability to be attacked by an enemy of Great Britain.

5. While Sir Arthur Nicolson fully admitted that the powers of a Dominion Government extended to an absolute and unfettered control of its own naval and military forces, he pointed out that the paragraph in question, unless modified before transmission to the Self-Governing Dominions, would not merely mislead them, but would be liable to be quoted as an admission on our part of a right which the Dominions do not, and cannot, possess. He therefore proposed that a paragraph should be inserted in the draft Memorandum which would at least make it plain that the British Government did not acquiesce in the erroneous doctrine that it was in the power of the Dominions to remain neutral when Great Britain was at war, and that the words "outside their territories or territorial waters " should be added to paragraph 3 of C.I.D. Paper 124-B (above quoted) before it is handed to the representa- tives of the Dominions.

6. The First Lord of the Admiralty said he was unable to accede to any such proposal. He explained that, in the discussions which had recently taken place between the Admiralty and the Dominion Governments respecting the status of the naval forces of the latter, the greatest tact and caution had to be exercised to avoid all mention of this thorny question. He fully admitted the correctness of Sir Arthur Nicolson's views, but he urged that it was in a high degree undesirable to emphasise

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