The Expanding Commonwealth

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THE Commonwealth has always been somewhat of a mystery to those outside it; today it seems also to puzzle a great many who are within. What is the point of an association, ask right-wing conservatives, which shares no common allegiance to the Crown? How can the Commonwealth have cohesion, demand left-wing liberals, without common ideals, openly professed? Both groups, for different reasons, tend to interpret the recent Prime Ministers' Conference as the smile on the face of the Cheshire cat, lingering long after the Commonwealth has ceased to have significance to its own members or to the international community.

Yet those closely in touch with the Commonwealth as a whole and with the meetings of last July in London believe the conference to have been eminently worthwhile. As another in a long series of exchanges between the working heads of far scattered but specially associated states, it provided neither a change nor a climax, but simply the most obvious expression of that continuous process of consultation which is the chief distinction of the Commonwealth, and its strongest bond. Yet it is not without reason that in the British press in mid-1956 there was unusually extensive discussion of the nature and future of the Commonwealth...