simply reflected similar differences of opinion throughout the empire. In all the dominions there were two well defined groups in reference to the question of imperial organization. One was the school of Burke, who placed very little reliance on forms and a great deal of reliance on spiritual ties and the bonds of blood. The other might be called the school of Hamilton who held that sentiment was very well but not very practical unless set forth categorically as obligations, with some agency available for their immediate application. So there was no decision reached by the first conference. The discussion between these two views went on in this particular dominion with a great deal of acrimony, and the most desperate parliamentary struggle that this building (the Canadian House of Commons) ever saw was waged over that principle. This went on until the voices of the disputants were drowned by the drum beats calling the armies to the field.

The war settled one thing at the very outset. The Germans knew all about the British empire. They were a practical people, a hard-headed people who believed nothing that they could not measure and handle, and they regarded the British empire as a political anachronism, a hoary imposture. Here was a supposed empire yet there was no Emperor barking at the colonies and no colonies goose-stepping in awe before the All-Highest (applause). It was quite obvious to them that at the slightest touch of the mailed fist, the whole empire would dissolve. So they applied the mailed fist. We are here from all parts of the empire, and we all tell the same story of what happened on August 4th, 1914 (applause). We saw all these invisible and intangible ties become bonds of steel and adamant, that held us one and indivisible through the unimaginable strain of the great war. There was never any flinching throughout the great struggle. The war is over not quite two years; and already the lessons of Gallipoli and Flanders are growing dim to some. Because the bonds that bind can no longer be visualized as marching armies there are those who are actually worrying lest the peoples of the empire may drift apart.

As the war proceeded statesmen of the empire met from time to time and made what were regarded as decisions of great moment, affecting the imperial policy and the future of the British Commonwealth. But what they did was to meet and take cognizance of decisions that had already been made by events. In this class we might put the resolution of the imperial war cabinet in April, 1917, which will always be regarded as a great landmark in the constitutional development of the British empire. The meaning of the resolution is perfectly plain. But if there was any doubt about it, General Smuts who, I imagine, was the joint drafter of the resolution, though it was moved at the conference by Sir Robert Borden, made its meaning clear; yet it was accepted with complete unanimity. In the following year there were two very remarkable applications of the doctrine laid down in that resolution. One was the virtual creation—it is a matter of record—in the summer of 1918 of an imperial council of safety and defence, which was made up of the premiers of the British nations and of no one else. The other was the conference between the overseas members of the imperial cabinet and the admiralty, followed by the declaration of naval policy by the dominions, which was an amplification and expression of the general imperial policy which had been decided the previous year.

Then came the Peace Conference, where the dominions asked for and obtained representation. That carried in its train a large number of consequences of the first order. So far as Canada was concerned—I do not know whether the same practice was followed in other Dominions—our representatives in Paris were appointed by the King as Canadian plenipotentiaries on the authority of an order-in-council passed by the Dominion Government. Attendance