As the war proceeded statesmen of the empire met from time to time and made what were regarded as decisions of great moment, affecting the imperial policy and the future of the British Commonwealth. But what they did was to meet and take cognizance of decisions that had already been made by events. In this class we might put the resolution of the imperial war cabinet in April, 1917, which will always be regarded as a great landmark in the constitutional development of the British empire. The meaning of the resolution is perfectly plain. But if there was any doubt about it, General Smuts who, I imagine, was the joint drafter of the resolution, though it was moved at the conference by Sir Robert Borden, made its meaning clear; yet it was accepted with complete unanimity. In the following year there were two very remarkable applications of the doctrine laid down in that resolution. One was the virtual creation—it is a matter of record—in the summer of 1918 of an imperial council of safety and defence, which was made up of the premiers of the British nations and of no one else. The other was the conference between the overseas members of the imperial cabinet and the admiralty, followed by the declaration of naval policy by the dominions, which was an amplification and expression of the general imperial policy which had been decided the previous year. Then came the Peace Conference, where the dominions asked for and obtained representation. That carried in its train a large number of consequences of the first order. So far as Canada was concerned—I do not know whether the same practice was followed in other Dominions—our representatives in Paris were appointed by the King as Canadian plenipotentiaries on the authority of an order-in-council passed by the Dominion Government. Attendance at the conference implied the signing of the peace treaty by representatives of the dominions. This carried with it the necessity of the Dominion parliamentary approval before Canada was subject to it and it carried with it as well the necessity of our entering into the League of Nations in full membership, with all that that meant in modification and change in our international relations (hear, hear). I was in London, attached to the Canadian delegation, when the momentous decision to ask for representation at the conference was made, and I do not imagine that the future was altogether foreseen as to the very great consequences that followed from that decision. But the dominion premiers had no alternative. It was a case where the decision had been made by events. When the conference met in Paris to make peace and to provide for a future world which would be better than the one which had been broken to pieces by the war it was out of the question that the great British Dominions should make a fugitive and intermittent appearance in the conference chamber, to which relatively insignificant nations belonged as of right (hear, hear). The