ought we to go forward in developing co-operation, on a basis of
equality and partnership, with the great self-governing communities
of our race in the distant portions of the world, else they will drift
away from us. Do not let us think for a moment that we can afford such
another fiasco as the late Colonial Conference. Do not let us imagine
for a moment that we can go to sleep over the questions then raised,
and not one of them settled, for four years, only to find ourselves
unprepared when the next Conference meets. A cordial social welcome,
many toasts, many dinners, are all very well in their way, but they
are not enough. What is wanted is a real understanding of what our
fellow countrymen across the seas are driving at, and a real attempt
to meet them in their efforts to keep us a united family. All that our
present rulers seem able to do is to misunderstand, and therefore
unconsciously to misrepresent--I do not question their good
intentions, but I think they are struck with mental blindness in this
matter--to misrepresent the attitude of the colonists and greatly to
exaggerate the difficulties of meeting them half-way. The speeches of
Ministers on a question like that of Colonial Preference leave upon me
the most deplorable impression. One would have thought that, if they
could not get over the objections which they feel to meeting the
advances of our kinsmen, they would at least show some sort of regret
at their failure. But not a bit of it. Their one idea all along has
been to magnify the difficulties in the way in order to make party
capital out of the business. They saw their way to a good cry about
"taxing the food of the people," the big and the little loaf, and so
forth, and they went racing after it, regardless of everything but its
electioneering value. From first to last there has been the same
desire to make the worst of things, sometimes by very disingenuous
means. First of all it was said that there was "no Colonial offer."
But when the representatives of the Colonies came here, and all in the