cHAP. X] MILITARY AND NAVAL DEFENCE 1289 
resolutions come to and proposals approved by the Conference 
which has now been held must be taken, so far as the delegates 
of the Dominions are concerned, to be ad referendum, and of 
no binding force unless and until submitted to their various 
Parliaments. 
I should add, in special reference to the delegates from 
South Africa, that they did not feel themselves in a position, 
in regard to either naval or military defence, to submit or to 
approve positive proposals until the Union of South Africa 
was an accomplished fact. With this preface I will briefly 
summarize the main conclusions of the Conference in regard, 
irst to Military, and next to Naval, Defence. 
After the main Conference at the Foreign Office, a Military 
Conference took place at the War Office, and resulted in an 
agreement on the fundamental principles set out in Papers 
which had been prepared by the General Staff for considera- 
tion by the Delegates. The substance of these Papers (which 
will be included among the Papers to be published) was 
a recommendation that, without impairing the complete 
control of the Government of each Dominion over the 
military forces raised within it, these forces should be 
standardized, the formation of units, the arrangements for 
transport, the patterns of weapons, &c., being asfar as possible 
assimilated to those which have recently been worked out 
for the British Army. Thus, while the Dominion troops 
would in each case be raised for the defence of the Dominion 
concerned, it would be made readily practicable in case of 
need for that Dominion to mobilize and use them for the 
defence of the Empire as a whole. 
The Military Conference then entrusted to a Sub-Confer- 
ence, consisting of military experts at head-quarters and 
from the various Dominions, and presided over by Sir W. 
Nicholson, acting for the first time in the capacity of Chiet 
of the Imperial General Staff, the duty of working out the 
detailed application of these principles. 
I may point out here that the creation early this year 
of an Imperial General Staff, thus brought into active 
working, is a result of the discussions and resolutions of the 
Conference of 1907. Complete agreement was reached by the 
members of the Sub-Conference, and their conclusions were 
finally approved by the main Conference and by the Com- 
mittee of Imperial Defence, which sat for the purpose under 
the presidency of the Prime Minister. The result is a plan 
for 80 organizing the forces of the Crown wherever they are 
that, while preserving the complete autonomy of each