Whether it is quite a proper thing to settle trouble by conferring
dominion status on it, is open to question. It is a practice that
is bound to spread. It is rumoured that it is now contemplated to
confer dominion status upon the Borough of Poplar and on the
Cambridge undergraduates. It is even understood that at the recent
disarmament conference England offered to confer dominion status
on the United States. President Harding would assuredly have accepted
it at once but for the protest of Mr. Briand, who claimed that any
such offer must be accompanied by a permission to increase the
French fire-brigade by fifty per cent.
It is lamentable, too, that at the very same moment when the Irish
question was extinguished, the Naval Question which had lasted for
nearly fifty years was absolutely obliterated by disarmament.
Henceforth the alarm of invasion is a thing of the past and the navy
practically needless. Beyond keeping a fleet in the North Sea and one
on the Mediterranean, and maintaining a patrol all round the rim of
the Pacific Ocean, Britain will cease to be a naval power. A mere
annual expenditure of fifty million pounds sterling will suffice for
such thin pretence of naval preparedness as a disarmed nation will
have to maintain.
This thing too, came as a surprise, or at least a surprise to the
general public who are unaware of the workings of diplomacy.
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