"submitted to the judgment of the country." This challenge the Government did not accept. Until the outbreak of the war no further steps were taken either to arrange for contribution or to establish a Canadian navy, though the naval college at Halifax was continued, and the training cruisers were maintained in a half-hearted way. In the Imperial Conference of 1911, one more attempt was made to set up a central governing authority in London. Sir Joseph Ward, of New Zealand, acting as the mouthpiece of the imperial federationists, urged the establishment, first of an Imperial Council of State and later of an Imperial Parliament. His proposals met no support. "It is absolutely impracticable," was Laurier's verdict. "Any scheme of representation--no matter what you call it, parliament or council--of the overseas Dominions, must give them so very small a representation that it would be practically of no value," declared Premier Morris of Newfoundland. "It is not a practical scheme," Premier Fisher of Australia agreed; "our present system of responsible government has not broken down." "The creation of some body with centralized authority over the whole Empire," Premier Botha of South Africa cogently insisted, "would be a step entirely antagonistic to the policy of Great Britain which has been so successful in the past .... It is the policy of decentralization which has made the Empire--the power granted to its various peoples to govern themselves." Even Premier Asquith of the United Kingdom declared the proposals "fatal to the very fundamental conditions on which our empire has been built up and carried on." Stronger than any logic was the presence of Louis Botha in the conferences of 1907 and 1911. On the former occasion it was only five years since he had been in arms against Great Britain. The courage and vision of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in granting full and immediate self-government to the conquered Boer republics had been justified by the results. Once more freedom proved the only enduring basis of empire. Botha's task in attempting to make Boer and Briton work together, first in the Transvaal, and, after 1910, in the Union of South Africa, had not been an easy one. Attacked by extremists from both directions, he faced much the same difficulties as Laurier, and he found in Laurier's friendship, counsel, and example much that stood him in good stead in the days of stress to come.