foreign affairs, defence, navigation and customs; and to mark off, at the other end of the field, functions which are obviously proper to provincial authorities, such as local government and primary education; and to leave between these two spheres a large intermediate sphere, not appropriated to either. 'We cannot say in advance what it contains, and still less what it will contain, because each generation has new needs which no human foresight can predict. All we can say is that any division of the field now made which purports to be hard, fast and final, will in a few years be out of relation to the facts, because the facts will have changed.'

Therefore he contends:

'Let the functions obviously proper to each be appropriated to the central and provincial governments at the outset. Let the central government by public enactments from time to time devolve such further powers as are seen to be suitable for provincial treatment. For the rest, let provincial governments seek, by promoting enabling Bills, such further powers as they find that in

practice they need and are able to exercise.'

We are not aware that any such scheme was at any time suggested in our Debates before Confederation. There is, as it seems to us, one strong objection to it, -that it would lead to endless contentions between the provincial and the central governments, which we escaped by our plan of fully delimiting the central and the provincial fields, and leaving it to the Courts see that the respective governments keep each within its own territory. Any contests between them are re moved from the stormy atmosphere of parliament. to

the peaceful atmosphere of the Courts.

to

THE IMPERIAL WAR CABINET AND THE DOMINIONS.

Too much stress has, perhaps, been laid both in the Dominions and in the United Kingdom on the novelty of the decision of the Imperial War Cabinet to confer upon the Prime Ministers of the Dominions 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, and to accord to the Dominion governments the right to nominate a visiting or a resident Minister in London to be a member of the Imperial War Cabinet at meetings other than those attended by the Prime Minister. It seems in some quarters at least as if the resolution were held to inaugurate a new era in imperial relations, and doubtless there is excuse for this view in the somewhat exaggerated importance of the manner in which the decision was first announced in the United Kingdom.1

In point of fact, however, the policy adopted is no more than an adaptation, with the necessary modifications, to war conditions of the proposals which were made to the Dominion governments by Mr. Lewis Harcourt, on behalf of the government of the United Kingdom, on December 10th, 1912. In that despatch the Secretary of State forwarded copies of resolutions. which had been agreed to at a meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence on May 30th, 1911, and which approved the principle that representatives of the Dominions should be summoned to attend meetings of the Committee of Imperial Defence when questions of naval and military defence affecting the over-sea Dominions were under consideration, and that a Defence Committee should be set up in each Dominion. It was explained that these resolutions were laid before Mr. Borden, when he visited London

1 See The Times, Aug. 16 and 19, 1918.

2 Imperial Treaty and the Dominions, pp. 323, 324.

in 1912 as head of the new Government in Canada, and that he had approved them and had stated that there would be no difficulty in arranging for the presence in London for some months every year of a Canadian Minister. Mr. Borden also expressed the desire that Dominion Ministers, who might be in London in connection with the Imperial Defence Committee, should receive in confidence knowledge of the policy and proceedings of the Imperial Government in foreign and other affairs. It was pointed out to Mr. Borden that the Imperial Defence Committee was a purely advisory body and could not become a body deciding on policy, which must remain the sole prerogative of the Cabinet, subject to the support of the House of Commons. But any Dominion Minister resi Ident in London would at all times have free and full access to the Prime Minister and the Secretaries of State for Foreign and Colonial Affairs for informa tion on all questions of imperial policy. Mr. Harcourt added that it was understood from the speech in the Dominion House of Commons that he approved which Mr. Borden had introduced the Naval Bill in this policy, and the same principle would be applied in the case of any other Dominion which desired to adopt it, or in lieu such other scheme as might be felt better suited to the circumstances of the Dominion in question. The meaning of the proposal was further eluci dated by quotation from a speech delivered by

Mr.

Harcourt to his constituents on October 25th, 1912, in which he advocated the policy of allotting to the Dominions a larger share in the executive control of defence, and in personal consultation and co-operation

with those individual British Ministers whose duty, was to frame policy in the United Kingdom.

it

The

policy suggested by Mr. Harcourt, it may be added, was not an essentially new departure; his predecessor, Lord Crewe, on March 15th, 1910, had in a speech urged the taking of greater interest by the Dominions in questions of diplomacy and foreign affairs, and

their co-operation with the United Kingdom in these matters.3

Mr. Harcourt's proposal met with no response from the Dominions other than Canada. The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, Mr. Fisher, was strongly in favour of the practice of holding annual meetings of the Imperial Conference and had no wish for continuous representation at London by a Minister, whose services could doubtless ill be spared, having regard to the very small number of members in the Australian House of Representatives. New Zealand also felt the time inopportune, largely no doubt for similar reasons; the Union of South Africa was content with the status quo in which foreign policy as a whole was directed by the United Kingdom, matters of special interest to the Dominions being referred. specifically to them, and Newfoundland, naturally enough, did not think the appointment of a resident Minister necessary. Canada, on the death of Lord Strathcona, did not appoint a permanent High Commissioner, but left the direction of affairs in the hands of Sir George Perley, who continued to hold a seat in the Dominion Cabinet, and thus could carry out the functions of a resident Minister as sketched in Mr. Harcourt's despatch. No essential change in the position was, it is clear, possible unless and until some event should make foreign politics a matter of immediate interest to the Dominions.

The necessary condition of further development was afforded by the outbreak of war, followed by the marked activity of the Dominions in affording moral and material aid to the United Kingdom in the struggle. The precise form taken by that development was conditioned by events in the United Kingdom, which resulted in a change of government and the advent to power of a Prime Minister who had formed the conviction that the existing Cabinet system could

8 Canadian Annual Review, 1910, p. 89.

4 Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 9005, p. vii.

not work in time of war, and that the control of the war must be entrusted to a small War Cabinet free from all administrative duties but yet in the closest touch with all departmental Ministers, while the latter should be able to devote their whole attention to the affairs of their own departments. In itself the conception was open to the grave objection that it left no authority to deal with domestic questions of any kind, which affected more than one Minister and therefore could not be disposed of by any one department, save the War Cabinet itself, and so obvious was this defect, which deprived the War Cabinet of much of its value, that a quasi-Cabinet had later to be created beside it for domestic affairs. For the purpose of relations with the Dominions, however, the new body offered obvious advantages, and accordingly on December 14th, 1916, the Dominion Governments were invited to send representatives to a special War Conference. In the invitation the nature of the meeting was made clear in the following

terms:

'They, therefore, invite your Prime Minister to attend a special and continuous series of meetings of the War Cabinet, in order to consider urgent questions affecting the prosecution of the war, the possible conditions on which, in agreement with our allies. we could assent to its termination, and the problems which For the purpose of these meetings your Prime Minister will be a member of the War Cabinet."

will then immediately arise.

of

The invitation was accepted by all the Dominions, though at the last moment the general election, necesthe sitated in the Commonwealth by the change in relations of political parties, prevented the actual representation of that Dominion. The meetings the War Conference were divided between meetings of the Imperial War Cabinet in the strict sense of the term, which dealt with the great problems of the war and was presided over by the British Prime Minister, and meetings of the Imperial War Confer ence, which dealt with minor matters connected with

5 Cd. 9005, p. 6.