Sir Joseph Ward proposed to invest
it with, would, in our judgment, be absolutely fatal to our present
system of responsible government.... So far as the Dominions are
concerned, this new machine could impose upon the Dominions by the
voice of a body in which they would be in a standing minority (that is
part of the case), in a small minority, indeed, a policy of which they
might all disapprove, a policy which in most cases would involve
expenditure, and an expenditure which would have to {296} be met by the
imposition on a dissentient community of taxation by its own government.

Mr Asquith's statement that 'that authority cannot be shared' has
sometimes been taken to mean that the United Kingdom could not and
would not admit the Dominions to a share in the control of foreign
policy. As the context and later action showed, however, it was to
sharing control with a new super-parliament that the prime minister of
the United Kingdom, in common with the prime ministers of every
Dominion except New Zealand, expressed his opposition. Later in the
Conference a further, if far from final, step was taken towards sharing
control with the Dominions. Upon Mr Fisher's demand that the Dominions
should be consulted in international agreements such as the Declaration
of London and the conventions of the Hague Conference, it was agreed
unanimously that, at further Hague Conferences and elsewhere when time
and subject-matter permitted, this would be done. Sir Wilfrid Laurier
agreed with this proposal, though stating his view that in such
negotiations the United Kingdom should be given a free hand. Some
greater share in foreign policy, most nationalists and {297}
imperialists alike agreed, the Dominions must possess. The real
question was, whether they should seek it through a central body in
which they would have a minority representation, and whose functions it
was impossible to define without serious infringement of the existing
powers of the Dominions, or whether they were to secure it along the
line so long pursued, of independence in what was overwhelmingly the
prime concern of each separate state, plus co-operation in what was
distinctly of common interest.

Hardly had preferential trade as a mooted topic receded into the
background when the question of Canada's share in the defence of the
Empire came to the front and took on a new urgency and a new interest.

The forces of Canada for land defence had been made much m