HC Deb 14 April 1915 vol 71 cc16-8
Sir GILBERT PARKER

I beg, in accordance with private notice, to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is in a position to give the House any further information as to the postponement of the Imperial Conference?

The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Harcourt)

If the House will permit me, I will state exactly what has happened in relation to this matter. After war had broken out His Majesty's Government assumed that it would not be for the convenience of any of the parties that the normal Conference should meet on its due date, which was May of this year; but no communications on the matter passed between us and the Dominion Governments. Early in December last I was made aware privately that Mr. Fisher, the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia, was in favour of the meeting of the Imperial Conference during and in spite of the War. I communicated this fact, also privately, by telegraph to the Prime Ministers of all the other Dominions, and they unanimously agreed with us that the holding of a normal Conference this year during hostilities would be difficult, if not impossible. In two cases at least it was said that the attendance of Ministers was impracticable. I then informed the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth that in view of the practical unanimity of opinion, we hoped he would recognise its force, and he replied that he had no wish to press the matter.

A few days ago Mr. Fisher was reported in the Press as saying with reference to the Imperial Conference:— What the British Government considers to be the correct thing is good enough for my Government. That is all I have to say. And in a private letter to me, dated 15th February, he wrote:— I cheerfully fall in with the decision not to hold the Imperial Conference this year, though I have not been able to convince myself that the reasons given for postponement were sufficient. However, we have a policy for this trouble that gets over all difficulties. When the King's business will not tit in with our ideas, we do not press them."— An admirable example of the spirit in which the Dominions deal with Imperial affairs during the War.

In all these communications I have referred only to what I have carefully called the normal Conference, by which I mean a full Conference with all the paraphernalia of miscellaneous resolutions, protracted sittings, shorthand reports and resulting Blue Books. This is the sort of Conference which we thought unsuited to present conditions, but in January, when intimating its postponement to the various Dominions, I telegraphed to each of the Governors-General:— Will you at the same time inform your Prime Minister that it is the intention of His Majesty's Government to consult him most fully and, if possible, personally, when the time arrives to discuss possible terms of peace. I need hardly add that His Majesty's Government intend to observe the spirit as well as the letter of this declaration, which I believe has given complete satisfaction to the Governments of the Dominions, and I have exceeded the ordinary limits of an answer to a question in order that the position as regards the Imperial Conference may be as plain to the public as it is to those Governments.