Empire Lost - Andrew Stewart [119]
Shortly following the conclusion of the San Francisco gathering a new nuclear age dawned and Hiroshima and Nagasaki's destruction was swiftly followed by the end of what had proven to be the Empire's final war. One FO commentator noted that recent events did not mean the Dominions' attachment to the Commonwealth was impaired. It was, however, clear that 'the lead did not rest with the UK in the same way as before the war'.52 Traditional impressions of Dominion independence had been adapted as a result of events at San Francisco. The Canadians, whose performance had been so warmly applauded by the British, had been anxious that this should be the case and were pleased with the results; reports reached the DO confirming that senior Canadian officials thought 'the myth of unity' had now been broken.53 Such a position was entirely as some felt should be the case. British Labourite Frederick Pethick-Lawrence was a conscientious objector during the First World War who was destined to become post-war secretary of state for India and Burma. The previous December, during the debate on the King's Speech at Westminster, he had responded to criticisms that the Dominions were displaying a policy of their own which differed from that of Britain, by rising to defend them. He saw this as a source of strength, the fact that there was a unity based around loose bonds, and attempts to turn them into something more rigid would not work. He held the Dominions to be 'a magnificent partnership of free nations, the constitution of which we certainly would not desire to see altered'.54 The war had certainly seen all of the Dominions grow increasingly more confident of their abilities to manage their respective foreign policies. It had also provided them with levels of fiscal and military strength that had been hitherto unimagined and a sense of independence that would not now be surrendered. Canada and South Africa had shown this on numerous occasions before the war had begun; now they were joined by even New Zealand, the most loyal of Dominions, but a member in its own right of the United Nations of independent states.
Batterbee, writing for the last time as the high commissioner before he left Wellington in the summer of 1945 for retirement, warned that Britain needed to show the will and ability to take the lead in the new world. His lesson for London was that 'as soon as peace comes again Great Britain, if she is to retain her prestige, must show that she belongs to the future and not to the past, and that she is determined not to follow but to lead the world in all matters of social and economic progress'.55 The final word must, however, go to the figure who had laboured longest to try and keep this sometimes difficult but nonetheless crucial coalition working. Following the defeat suffered by his Conservative Party colleagues in the July 1945 general election, Cranborne wrote to Emrys-Evans with a long appraisal of the DO's wartime performance. He was modestly pleased with the role he had played and the successes that had been achieved but he was less happy with the situation that now prevailed within the Empire, generally concluding that there had actually been little improvement during the last five years. As the figure who had been most intimately involved in the management his is a fitting epitaph.
First Canada, and now as appeared at San Francisco, Australia and New Zealand, are beginning to show most disturbing signs of moving away from the conception of a Commonwealth acting together to that of independent countries, bound to each other only by the most shadowy ties. Dr Evatt is only a particularly repulsive representative of a not at all uncommon point of view in his own and the other Empire countries. I wish that I could see the answer to all this, but I don't. It may be that we ought to speak more frankly to Dominion governments. Whenever, however, we have tried this, the only result has been to irritate them and strengthen