"Good Name & Fame"

The Prime Ministers of Canada, Australia and New Zealand were made freemen of the City of London last week, proclaimed to be "men of good name and fame." Cried City Chamberlain Sir Adrian Donald Wilde Pollack, according to ancient ritual:

"They do not desire the freedom of the city whereby they will defraud the King or this city of any of its rights, customs and privileges. . . . They will pay their Scot, bear their lot, and so they all say!"

As to Canada's Rt. Hon. Richard Bedford Bennett, however, the City Chamberlain seemed to have some slight present doubts. At the first session of the Imperial Conference Prime Minister Bennett was very outspoken about Canada's rights, even in some respects defied the Mother Country (TIME, Oct. 20).

"He has not belied," said Sir Adrian meaningly of Mr. Bennett, "his reputation for plain speaking and anxiety to get things done--which admirable attributes," added the Chamberlain hastily, "are the more conspicuous on account of his well-known, hereditary and passionate loyalty to the Empire."

Work Done by committees of the Imperial Conference last week:

1) Recommended that an Empire Tribunal similar to the Permanent Court of Arbitration of The Hague be set up to handle suits between the different nations of the British Commonwealth. Suits brought by persons will, as formerly, be carried to His Majesty's Privy Council as the supreme tribunal.

2) Found "practical" and recommended for immediate adoption a quota system under which the Mother Country would agree to buy a definite percentage of her imports from the Dominions, and vice versa.

3) Approved a request by the Dominions that their governments may communicate with the government of a non-Empire nation "directly." Today if Prime Minister James Henry Scullin of Australia wishes to communicate diplomatically with the Emperor of Abyssinia he must do so through the British Foreign Office in London. Under the new scheme he would telegraph what he wanted to say to the British Minister in the Abyssinian Capital.

A possible hitch: Mr. Scullin might tell the British Minister to inform the Emperor of Abyssinia that black is white; at the same time Prime Minister Forbes of New Zealand might tell him to say that black is pink; and either Canada's Bennett or Mr. MacDonald might instruct him to say that black is green.

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