What Use is the Commonwealth?

MR. LANGLEY:

Distinguished Guests and Members of the Empire Club of Canada. We in Canada have a unique tradition of periodically sending Britain bright young men, who rise to prominence there, and from such positions, enhance and improve Our mutual relationships and at the same time enrich both nations through their dual yet common loyalties. The names of Beaverbrook, Bennett, and Beverley Baxter come to mind as predecessors of our guest of honour. Hamilton born, Sir Edwin's education took place at Trinity College School and R.M.C., following which he served through the War with the Canadian Army in Europe. Remaining in Britain in 1945, he simultaneously began a business and a parliamentary career--and both successfully. A man of varied interests who is a musician in his own right, he is also the Chairman of the Bath Festival Society and an accomplished and avid pilot. He has served the interests Of Canadians--and our veterans--as well as. the Commonwealth--in many organizations and capacities. Gentlemen, one of our most successful exports--the Member for North Somerset--Sir Edwin Leather.

SIR EDWIN LEATHER:

I am most grateful for the kind introduction you have given, and honoured by the privilege of addressing your distinguished and historic Club, which, if

I remember correctly, is the one not formed in Hamilton. Having been born in Toronto and nurtured in Hamilton I am never quite sure what to call myself--this has presented little difficulty to other people. It seems to be my fate that nearly every time I come to Toronto I make a speech in this hotel on some aspect of international relations. One day I am hoping to make a speech on the relations between Hamilton and Toronto--even the Star would not dare to print it!

There was an incident in the career Of the great F. E. Smith, first Lord Birkenhead, which I think illustrates the quandary of my position today. You may recall that F. E. Smith was one of the greatest orators who ever appeared at the English Bar, and was almost universally detested by H. M. judges for the contempt with which he treated them. On one occasion when he was summing up a case for the defence, and virtually directing the jury at the same time, the irate judge banged his gavel and rasped out "Mr. Smith, what pray do you think I am here for?" To which F. E. retorted "Far be it for me, My Lord, to pass judgment on the inscrutable ways of Providence!"

Inscrutable or not, here I am. It is your Committee's fault for having invited me, though they were very careful not to tell me what to talk about.

It has been surreptitiously suggested that the subject you would really like to hear about is how Roy Thomson and I got our titles. It might be amusing to see who took notes! On that vexed subject I will only say that being, I hope, without any undue share of human vanity, I have always gone on the principle that what was good enough for John A. Macdonald and Wilfrid Laurier ought to be good enough for me. You may say that times change--indeed they do but not always for the better. I wonder if all the pundits diagnosing Canada at the moment are really so much wiser than the Fathers of Confederation?

We live, Mr. Chairman, in troublous and trying times. The world is full of horrors and the great thing about our age is that you can now see most of them right at home on television. While reflecting in my library in England some weeks ago on what I might say to you today about the state of world affairs I thought it might be interesting to check just what condition the world was in one hundred years ago. In less than half an hour browsing through books on my shelves I collected the following few choice items:

In March 1864 very nearly the whole of the Western Hemisphere was in arms against itself. Bruce Catton has described 1864 as "the very worst year of the American Civil War ... the year of the ultimate horror." From March till November, Grant and Lee were locked in the kind of endless, useless killing that was only repeated at Passchendael and Verdun. Over a million men died. Britain and the United States were on the verge of going to war with each other, and very nearly did. Mexico and more than half the nascent countries of South and Central America were either at war with each other or amongst themselves. Canadians, with our customary more gentlemanly ways were only fighting with words and brickbats; we had a minority government struggling for its life, and a series of violent by-elections, in one of which the City of Toronto alone recorded more than one hundred casualties admitted to hospital. The eighth Parliament of the Province of Canada, sitting at Quebec was squabbling endlessly about, you never guess, separate schools and the appalling relations between the Provinces. Conditions in the country were so bad that D'Arcy Magee wrote John A. Macdonald promising to join the Sons of Temperance! I am sorry to say that I have been unable to find any Canadian historian who has recorded the results of that singularly grotesque idea. (Perhaps one day Professor Creighton will enlighten us.) In Montreal Wilfrid Laurier was engaged in one of his periodic battles with Monsignor Bourget and barely escaped excommunication.

In Europe, Bismarck was busily building up the appalling military machine which was shortly to make Germany the most feared nation on earth. In Africa the white man had yet scarcely ventured beyond the confines of the harbour installations where Arabs and Africans were only being prevented by force from selling their fellow countrymen into slavery. Ninety-five per cent of Africa's land mass remained, like the teenage girl, virgin and half unexplored.

No matter how you look at 1864 it was a helluva year! After taking into full account Communism, the hydrogen bomb, Dr. Castro, Hal Banks and Dr. Chaput, there is still a lot to be said for 1964.

The Commonwealth is what Canada made it

May I turn now for a time to take a critical look at the present state of the Commonwealth: that strange evolutionary body from which Canada sprang and had her being, and to which she pays an allegiance made up of an almost incomprehensible combination of loyalty and indifference, enthusiasm and scorn; in their attitude towards which Canadians often appear to be united only by their differences.

Have you ever thought that the modem Commonwealth is, in fact, very much the handiwork of Canadians? There has existed in Britain in this century only a tiny minority now led from the left by the oldest living Canadian nobleman, who still believe that the Empire of Queen Victoria could and should have been developed with centralized institutions. If it is true, however, and I believe it is, that the modern Commonwealth is a pretty ramshackle affair consisting predominantly of pious hopes, councils, conferences and talks--as my golf pro says of my game "a lot of swing but no hit"-then it must be historically acknowledged that this is largely because Canadian leaders would have it no other way. There was a time when it was fashionable around Toronto to blame the late Mr. Mackenzie King and Cardinal Villeneuve for this state of affairs; and there can be no doubt that Mr. King had a positive genius for putting curves into straight roads. This, however, is to misread Canadian history.

It is true, as Mr. Massey records in his Memoirs, that the External Affairs Department in the 1920's regarded cooperation with anyone as a confession of inferiority. But the real architect, the man who mapped the road the Commonwealth has trod for the last century, was John A. Macdonald. It is ironic to note, in the context of present Canadian political controversy, that all John A.'s thinking on confederation was based on the absolute assumption that Canada never could be united on a centralized, imperial basis. It is not for me to argue today that Anglo Saxon Canadians might have substituted their own imperialist attitudes for these which were cast off from London, but the thought is worth ruminating on.

It is not difficult to make out a case that the Commonwealth countries today have little in common but history, and the British long since learned that parenthood often seems like nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you! Some of the African members have already gone far down a path which appears to us to lead only to military dictatorship. The Republic of South Africa still strangely buoyant, peaceful and prosperous, despite the execration of the rest of the world, has been slung out of the Commonwealth very largely at Canadian insistence. India and Pakistan have been at daggers drawn from the first moment of their independence. In the United Nations about the only single issue on which the Commonwealth countries are united is that the Americans should do more to assist everybody. This is indeed what Canada's outstanding orator, Leonard Brockington, once described as "the discordant symphony of a free society".

Britain's inability to impose common sense in Cyprus, to prevent a bloody revolution in Zanzibar; or to react with power against the taunts and insults of President Nasser, are indeed galling for the British. Washington's frustrations at the hands of Cuba and Panama, the jeering mobs outside American Embassies in Accra, Nicosia, or Phnom Pen are of precisely the same order. We can all find consolation in the wise words of Dr. Johnson, that "a fly may sting a horse and make it wince, but the one remains a noble animal, while the other is but an insect!"

The Other Side of the Story

But if there were no British Commonwealth, and if it were true that it is now valueless and powerless in the world, I wonder how many would like to assert that Zanzibar would today be the only country in East or Central Africa which had fallen to subversion, violence and revolution? How many would have dared to predict that one of the first actions taken by independent African ruled states would have been to invite the British back to maintain law and order? If it were not for Britain's interests in the Far East how strongly could you argue that President Sukarno's psychopathic fumings at Malaysia would not already have burst into full scale war? Would anyone whose mind is not imprisoned fast in the dungeon of his own prejudice be prepared today to assert without qualification that, if it were not for the infinite patience and statemanship of the British Commonwealth Service, the unhappy people of Cyprus would have already involved Greece and Turkey in all out war; with the disruption of NATO that that would inevitably mean, and the real probability of unlimited Russian military intervention over a wide range of Eastern Europe and the Near East?

We acclaim all this in the name of the Commonwealth and these deeds and policies have been applauded in Ottawa, Canberra, and Delhi. But what part have Ottawa, Canberra and Delhi played in this critical chapter of keeping the peace? Would not a more critical analysis of the situation demonstrate that these were not in fact Commonwealth efforts at all but totally British efforts? I wonder how up-to-date you are in your assessments of Britain. For sheer speed and cold-blooded efficiency I suggest it would be hard to beat the operations of Britain's armed forces these last few months. Many thousands of men and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of strategic equipment have been hurled all over the globe at a few hours' notice, without fuss and upheaval; and without a ripple on Britain's economy or the strength of her world-wide financial institutions. I wonder how many of you fully realize to what an extraordinary extent Britain is today a country almost dominated by youth and vigour-in every field from Cabinet Ministers to Beatles! And whatever they lack it is certainly not virility! It's true we suffer Malcolm Muggeridge, but the Americans survive Lenny Bruce! You may hear some dismal stuff coming out of Britain just now but bear in mind we are on the verge of a general election and our Opposition has been opposing for a long time. Long may it continue!

But, sir, one of the inevitable results of the traditional Canadian Commonwealth policy is that these world problems must be dealt with almost exclusively by the British. The Commonwealth is a wheel without a rim, all its members have ties of one kind or another with Britain, but very few ties with each other. Is not this possibly a source of weakness to the whole? Is Our continued refusal to do more than talk about any kind of central Commonwealth institutions still really based on post-Colonial fears of being dominated by Whitehall? Or is it not perhaps just that it is cheaper to allow Britain to do the dirty work? Amidst all the soul searching which seems to be going on in Canada at present I wonder what real justification there is for this wave of, what looks remarkably like, national self-pity? Agonizing reappraisals may be necessary occasionally but to people living abroad Canada seems at the moment to be almost bent on self-destruction largely because we have only the second highest living standards in the world. Are we perhaps in danger of becoming so mesmerized by our domestic jealousies, our fears that someone else may get more than I'm getting, that no one outside a devoted few in Ottawa even notices the great tide of world events that threaten to engulf us?

The great dominating international fact in the second half of the twentieth century, as my own Prime Minister put it to this Club a month ago, is not even the problem of living with the hydrogen bomb, but the explosive danger of the horizontal division of the world. The southern half, poor, clamouring, over-populated and under-developed; the northern half, on balance, rich, prosperous, and increasing the disparity between itself and the south at a faster rate every year. This danger will become even more acute if the division is allowed to harden on purely racial lines. Are we certain that racial prejudice is not already the Achilles' heel of Canada?

British leaders, whatever their faults and mistakes, are one of the few bodies of men in the world who not only understand this fact, but have to spend their lives living with it. British initiative persuaded us to set up a Commonwealth Economic Consultative Council which has played a vital part in world trade liberalisation over the last decade; and is at this moment the critical focus of our activities designed to improve trading prospects for ourselves in the so-called Kennedy round at GATT. The British initiative to set up a Commonwealth Economic Development Council to deal specifically with the problems of the Southern hemisphere has found the capitals of the white Commonwealth countries singularly unenthusiastic. Are we determined to prove the Communists are right, that the West really is self-centred and selfish to the point of self-destruction?

I do not for one moment criticize the magnificent contribution which Canada has made in the post-war world; to the evolution of the United Nations; her generous response in the field of economic aid to the under-developed countries; nor the incomparable leadership which she gave to Western Europe in the formation of the Atlantic Alliance on which the ruins of Western Europe have been rebuilt. But when we come to discuss the development of more tangible political initiatives I wonder if in our hearts we can really still base our pride on the fact that our main contribution to the world political argument is to continue to point to our unfortified border and boast that for 150 years Canadians and Americans have not shot at each other -presumably members Of the Canadian Seamen's Union do not count?

War has been virtually banished as an instrument of foreign policy amongst the great powers; for this we must thank the H bomb. Without the capacity to exert power--Britain and Egypt, the United States and Cuba, Russia and Albania--the foundations of rigid national states are being eroded. In the world of trade and commerce the giants are already rapidly losing their national identities. Already an appreciable number of many European and some American Companies employ more foreigners than their own nationals. Those who have to take decisions in international trade and commerce, be they governments or businessmen, find it increasingly impossible to decide on lines only to suit their own countries.

Under the impact of the race for power between the hammer of the United States and the anvil of Russia, Europe is being reforged into some kind of unit which will probably turn out to be quite different from the concept of the Treaty of Rome. Economics are obviously important, but the consequences of the Mediterranean and North European mind being given free rein, unhampered by national attitudes and historic claustrophobia, will have far more dynamic effects. What is most remarkable about General de Gaulle is that he is now the only prominent statesman in the whole of Europe who still thinks in terms of a pre-1939 world.

The American dollar and British sterling systems between them today finance some ninety per cent of world trade, including all Russian trade outside the Iron Curtain. This is not neo-colonialism, nor because of the strength of the United States or Britain. It is because of the stability of their social and political systems; the strength of their banking systems, and the efficiency and integrity of their commodity and money markets. I think it of the utmost importance when I read the President of a great Canadian bank comment in his annual report that the Canadian economy is in the best position for years "to contribute more actively to vital international programmes". This does not mean just spending money. Even more than cash, what the world desperately needs today is the fullest possible use of all our resources. Even the United States, which at times has appeared to consider that its foreign policy was divinely inspired, and its resources limitless, has been forced to take cognizance of the balance of payments and to give up policies of unlimited commitment.

The Commonwealth in general, and Britain, Canada and the United States in particular, do co-operate over a wide field; but over an even wider field national pride, jealousies and suspicions still operate, and we dissipate our respective strengths in futile competition for national prestige. If God gives us any paramount task at this stage of our history, I believe it is to maximise the use of our economic resources, of our political institutions, of the machinery of international trade, finance and law, as Alec Home put it to you "to organize the world for peace and plenty". Surely one may hope that Canadians will not choose the very moment when larger unities are vital for survival to allow our own national institutions to fall apart out of sheer pettymindedness. A devastating challenge faces the rich countries of the Western World: sir, I for one still devoutly believe that Canada has the wisdom, the courage, and above all the maturity, to play a worthy part.

Thanks

Thanks of the meeting were expressed by C. Warren Goldring, a Director of the Club.