this conception the Crown became the chief visible link of Empire.
Autonomists believed that 'His Majesty's Government' should remain a
manifold power. 'We all claim to be His Majesty's Government,'
declared Sir Wilfrid at the Conference of 1907. The Government at
Sydney was as much His Majesty's as the Government at Westminster. The
Canadian Privy Council was as much His Majesty's as the Privy Council
of the United Kingdom. The tendency in the Dominions had been to
magnify the powers of the king, who was equally their king, and to
lessen the powers of the parliament elected in the United Kingdom. In
fact the Crown became, if the metaphor is not too homely for such great
{289} affairs, a siphon which transferred power from His Majesty's
Government in the old land to His Majesty's Governments in the
Dominions.

It was, however, not enough to have independent control. It was
equally necessary, as the other half of the policy of co-operation, to
provide means for securing united and effective action. These were
provided in many forms. High commissioners and agents-general became
increasingly important as ambassadors to London. Departments of
External Affairs ensured more constant and systematic intercourse.
Special conferences, such as the Naval Conference of 1909 in London, or
the several exchanges of visits between the Australian and the New
Zealand ministers, kept the different states in touch with each other.
But by far the most important agency was the Colonial or Imperial
Conference, now a definitely established body, in which Dominions and
Kingdom met on equal footing, exchanged views, and received new light
on each other's problems. Thus the question of co-operation between
the Five Nations became much like the problem which faces any allies,
such as those of the Triple Entente, save that in the case of the
British Empire the alliance is not transitory and a {290} common king
gives a central rallying-point. Nowhere has this free form of unity,
as unique in political annals as the British Empire itself, received
clearer expression than in the words of Edward Blake in the British
House of Commons in 1900:

For many years I for my part have looked to conference, to delegation,
to correspondence, to negotiation, to quasi-diplomatic methods, subject
always to the action of free parliaments here and elsewhere, as the
only feasible way of working the quasi-federal union between the Empire
and the sister nat