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
