ed its view that any coming readjustment must be based on a
full recognition of the Dominions as autonomous nations of an imperial
commonwealth; that it should recognize the right of the Dominions and of
India to an adequate voice in foreign policy; and that it should provide
effective arrangements for continuous consultation in all important
matters of common concern and for such concerted action as the several
Governments should determine. The policy of alliance, of cooperation
between the Governments of the equal and independent states of the
Empire, searchingly tested and amply justified by the war, had compelled
assent.

The coming of peace gave occasion for a wider and more formal
recognition of the new international status of the Dominions. It had
first been proposed that the British Empire should appear as a unit,
with the representatives of the Dominions present merely in an advisory
capacity or participating in turn as members of the British delegation.
The Dominion statesmen assembled in London and Paris declined to
assent to this proposal, and insisted upon representation in the Peace
Conference and in the League of Nations in their own right. The British
Government, after some debate, acceded, and, with more difficulty,
the consent of the leading Allies was won. The representatives of the
Dominions signed the treaty with Germany on behalf of their respective
countries, and each Dominion, with India, was made a member of the
League. At the same time only the British Empire, and not any of the
Dominions, was given a place in the real organ of power, the Executive
Council of the League, and in many respects the exact relationship
between the United Kingdom and the other parts of the Empire in
international affairs was left ambiguous, for later events and counsel
to determine. Many French and American observers who had not kept in
close touch with the growth of national consciousness within the British
Empire were apprehensive lest this plan should prove a deep-laid scheme
for multiplying British influence in the Conference and the League.
Some misunderstanding was natural in view not only of the unprecedented
character of the Empire's development and polity, but of the incomplete
and ambiguous nature of the compromise affected at Paris between the
nationalist and the imperialist tendencies within the Empire. Yet the
reluctance of the British imperialists of the straiter sect to accede
to the new arrangement, a