Among the many endeavors of late years in England to draw the distant peoples of the great British Empire into closer relations with its sovereign Mother Country, and into the feeling of stronger ties of unity among themselves and with her, none seems to have been wiser or more surely of effect than that which brought about the Imperial Press Conference of June, 1909. It assembled sixty representatives of the Newspaper Press of every part of the Empire and of every shade of political opinion. It entertained them delightfully and impressively for three weeks. It made all England and its colonies and dependencies listen to their discussion of many questions, all bearing on the fundamental desire to make the most and best that can be made of the great political organism which extends its law to every continent and its influence to all the world. It brought before them its most distinguished and eloquent men to address them at meetings and feasts. It assembled at Spithead its stupendous central fleet of battleships, to pass it in review before them. It filled their minds with an undoubtedly new realization of what the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland—the sovereign, the seat, the center of greatness in their Empire—is to it; and they went back to Canada, to Australia, to South Africa, to New Zealand, even to India, to propagate that realization in other minds. A Western Australian editor, speaking at one of the banquets of the Conference, referred to this result, saying: "The influence that had been brought to bear upon the overseas delegates could not fail to have very great effects upon their writings in the future. Coming as they did from isolated parts of the Empire, it was an agreeable surprise to them to find that they had all been thinking Imperially, and thinking in much the same way. While the spirit of nationalism was growing up very strongly, they felt that the spirit of nationalism was in no way out of harmony with the true spirit of Imperialism; and it had been a revelation to the delegates to find the unanimity that existed, not only among the English-speaking people of the Empire, but among those who came from different races. They had been helped to strengthen that feeling of Imperial unity in the certain hope that eventually the highest ideals of the best form of Imperialism would be realized. That form of Imperialism was not associated with a policy of aggrandisement, but was associated with the policy that would tend to promote the peace of the world, and the prosperity and the betterment of humanity generally." {58}