"Loose Connection"

For some 200 years, Lloyd's of London had known every day of the Empire's growth--every new wharf, every skirmish, every treaty. One night last week, Lloyd's, like a rich aunt with the children home from school, threw open its doors for a party Disraeli would have loved: for 2,400 guests, 2,400 bottles of champagne, and, to soften the glitter of the great marble halls, -L-1,400 worth of flowers. The London Evening Standard glowed: "Diamonds, champagne, beautiful women in lovely gowns, men wearing dazzling displays of honors and medals. There is no doubt that last night's party was the most generous since the war."

Guests of honor were the Prime Ministers (or their deputies) of seven Dominions* of the British Commonwealth come to London to consult--but not to decide. On many issues they would have found decision difficult. Those issues were deliberately put aside, or touched upon lightly.

A Change of Attire. Over the smiles, the flowers, the bubbles, hung a question: Just what is this new Commonwealth? Not the old one, that was sure. Most prominent and respected man at the London conference last week was Jawaharlal Nehru, who had spent 14 years of his life in British jails; for this he held no grudge against Britain, but for his lifelong struggle he certainly had no repentance. Nehru, on arriving in London, changed his long black sherwani for a Savile Row suit. He looked well in a Homburg hat.

But was it as easy as that? Nehru, Westernized leader of an un-Westernized nation, stood for a bewildering new fact: the vast majority of the people of the British Dominions do not speak English, have only partial contact with British institutions and are not deeply touched by what Winston Churchill has called "unity within the mysterious circle of the Crown."

The sovereign Dominions were not formally bound to act together. In 1911, every one of "the old Dominions" (and the mother country) had rejected a proposal binding them to concerted action in defense and foreign relations. Their union rested on like-mindedness, on "kingship and kinship," on a common heritage and a common way of doing things. It rested also--very heavily--on British control of the seas and London's central position in world commerce--of which Lloyd's was a symbol. These had been the central political and economic facts of the preceding century.

Now that India, Pakistan and Ceylon were full dominions, now that Britain's primacy in sea power and trade had departed, now that South Africa was heading down an undemocratic, anti-British road (see below), what was left of the easy trust and informal cooperation of the old Commonwealth?

"A Sprawling Collection." London's Economist asked some uneasy questions: "To be quite specific, do the Dominion Governments, now that there are seven of them, get all the secret telegrams that they used to get when there were only four? And if not, is something real being sacrificed for benefits that it would be hard to define?" The Economist concluded: "The old safe world in which the 'loose connection' flourished no longer exists, and unless the Commonwealth revises the standard of conduct and cooperation which it expects from its members it will become merely a sentimental fiction. There is no virtue in mere size--'the larger the assembly of sheep, the more it appeals to the wolves.' A sprawling collection of nations with no common obligations, with no coordinated line of action in world affairs, and at odds with each other makes up an international system which is a travesty of the word Commonwealth."

If they could not deal with the questions raised by the Economist, the delegates did make some progress on other fronts. Most important was the discussion of the relation (some Britons call it a conflict) between the Commonwealth and a Western European Union. Dominion representatives asked Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Stafford Cripps if Britain's commitments to supply capital goods to Europe under the Marshall Plan would not interfere with the shipment of similar goods to their countries. Cripps said no. The visitors seemed impressed when he pointed out that Britain's capital goods exports to Commonwealth nations were up 60% over 1938.

Eire, which is also technically a Dominion, was not invited to the conference as a whole, but was asked to sit in on a special session at Chequers, Prime Minister Attlee's country home. There the delegates discussed what would happen if Eire carried out her plan to leave the Commonwealth. The delegates were agreed that such a wayward sister would lose trade preferences and the right of her people to emigrate to other Dominions.

Such considerations might hold Eire--and India--in the Commonwealth, but they would not take the place of "kingship and kinship," nor the place of the once-supreme British Navy.

The weakening of the Commonwealth, which the U.S. would once have welcomed, was now a matter of grave U.S. concern. Who, for example, was now responsible for defense and order in the key strategic areas around the shores of the Indian Ocean? Burma had stepped from the Empire into chaos. Other lands might go the same way. Little to stop them was apparent last week in London.

* Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Ceylon.

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