Conference naturally would be the head of the most powerful State. Obviously, that State in practice must occupy a superior position in Conference, if only because it is in the strongest position to act independently in the last resort. But special occasions are conceivable, as will be explained later, in which it would be more convenient for the head of the State most immediately concerned in the particular question to act as representative of the whole Empire.
The function of the Conference cannot be quite the same in connection with the several different classes of Imperial interests which have been described. As regards 'political' external interests, the Conference would give the executive heads the opportunity of agreeing upon a common foreign policy, as occasion arose. Having so agreed, each Premier would be responsible to his own country, according to the recognised constitutional doctrine, for the consequences of his assent. If the common policy led eventually to war, each Premier would be in the position of having to justify that war, which he himself had helped to make, to the people of his own country. That position in itself would mark a great advance upon the existing position, in which there is no guarantee that either party in any State except our own will be prepared to defend the policy of the war and urge participation therein.
The existing danger was illustrated by the action of political parties in Canada upon the outbreak of the South African War, and throughout its duration. Both parties attempted to play to the French-Canadian electorate, which was hostile to the war. The French-Canadians had no sympathy with the eagerness of the English-Canadians to take part, which they regarded as an outburst of foreign racial sentiment. They felt that the War was none of their making, because the Dominion Government had not been consulted at every stage of the diplomatic controversy. It is true that the Dominion Parliament, a few months before the
