1556 IMPERIAL UNITY [PART VIII 
representatives of the United Kingdom and the Dominions, 
to examine into the natural resources and trade conditions 
of all the self-governing parts of the Empire, promises to be 
of real service and the solution of many problems regarding 
inter-Imperial trade. If no practicable scheme for an AL 
Red Route has yet been devised, the interest of the Govern- 
ments has already evoked an improvement in the services 
conducted by private enterprise, and the problem will no 
doubt ultimately be solved in this manner. The Postmaster- 
General was able to promise very substantial reductions both 
in deferred ordinary messages and in press telegrams, while 
the British Government somewhat unexpectedly presented 
for approval a scheme which will create a chain of wireless 
telegraph stations extending from England to Cyprus, Aden, 
Bombay, the Straits, and Western Australia. A minor 
postal reform was promised in the extension to Canada and 
Australia of the British Postal Order system. 
The discussion on emigration, if not directly fruitful in 
results, was of great value in that it disposed of the claim 
which has been made in England that the Government should 
give more active assistance to emigration. All readers of the 
discussion must realize that the existing emigration represents 
to the full all the population that Great Britain can spare 
for the Dominions, and that, taken on the whole, the existing 
emigration agencies, public and private, so fully meet the 
needs of the situation that the expenditure of Imperial funds 
nn emigration cannot be justified. 
The other discussions were in the main negative in result. 
The attempt to obtain for the Dominions wider legislative 
powers in matters of shipping broke down almost at once in 
view of the discrepancy of opinion which was revealed on the 
part of the several Governments as to the powers which they 
actually possessed as matters stood, while the Imperial 
Government was not prepared to surrender to the Dominion 
Legislatures powers to regulate British ships on the high 
seas, which must result de facto in a preference to foreign 
vessels, or in retaliation on British shipping by foreign 
Powers. Questions of revenue prevented the Imperial