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2nd Day.] Reconstitution of the Colonial Office. [25 May, 1911. Sir JOSEPH WARD : I shall be exceedingly pleased. Mr. HARCOURT : Gentlemen, we have been made aware of the desire for closer co-operation and more continuous knowledge of the action of the Colonial Department between one Conference and another, and of all the subjects which are properly cognate to Conference work, and we have endeavoured to meet many of the points which are raised by Sir Joseph Ward's resolution, which is divided into six sections :— (1) That it is essential that the Department of the Dominions be separated of the Crown Colonies, and that each Department be placed under a separate Permanent Under-Secretary. (2) That in order to give due effect to modern Imperial development it has now become advisable to change the title of Secretary of State for the Colonies to that of Secretary of State for Imperial Affairs. (3) That the staff of the Secretariat be incorporated with the Dominions Department under the new Under-Secretary and that all questions relating to the self-governing Dominions be referred to that Department; the High Commissioners to be informed of matters affecting the Dominions, with a view to their Governments expressing their opinion on the same. (4) That the High Commissioners be invited to attend meetings of the Committee of Defence when questions on naval or military Imperial defence affecting the oversea Dominions are under discussion. (5) That the High Commissioners be invited to consult with the Foreign Ministers on matters of foreign, industrial, commercial, and social affairs in which the oversea Dominions are interested, and inform their respective Governments. (6) That the High Commissioners should become the sole channel of communication between Imperial and Dominion Governments, Governors-General, and Governors on all occasions — being given identical and simultaneous information. I will deal specially with No. 1 and No. 3. On No. 4 the Prime Minister will have something to say when we meet in the Committee on Imperial Defence, and he will have some proposals to put forward, so we will, if you do not mind, omit No. 4 to-day. As to No's. 5 and 6, I will either leave them over, or merely as a preface say that we should see very great difficulty about that direct communication, because it cuts across the theory of Ministerial responsibility, and of course you place the Governors-General of the Dominions and the Secretary of State here in a very difficult position, if they were outside the ordinary course of communication between the Governments of the Dominions and the Home Government. I will not deal more particularly with that at this moment, but we may come back to it if Sir Joseph Ward wishes. As to No. 1, what I may call the bifurcation of the Colonial Office, the division of the departments in the Colonial Office is already complete below the Permanent Under-Secretary; that is to say, we have two Assistant Under-Secre-taries, one for the Dominions and one for the Crown Colonies, with a full department under each. It is necessary, of course, that we should have a third department in the Colonial Office. It would be wasteful to divide what we call the General Department, which includes the legal branch, the registry, the library, the accounts branch, the copying branch, the printing and other work of the general branch, which deals with honours, and representatives at functions like the Coronation and so on, which are common, of course, to Dominions and Crown Colonies. But except for the Under-Secretary of State we have now a complete division. The suggestion here is that there should be two permanent Under-Secretaries of State, one for the Dominions and one for the Crown Colonies. lam prepared, on behalf of the Government, if strongly pressed by the Conference, to accept such a change. But I should like to put before the Conference some points which I think show the disadvantage which would accrue internally here to the Office, and externally to the Dominions themselves. Internally, as you will understand, the difficulty of conducting an Office with