World: TIES BOTH MAGIC & MATERIAL

FOR 30 years the Commonwealth has been linked by close economic ties between its member nations. What else holds the Commonwealth together? The vital bond, said Mackenzie King, one of Canada’s most distinguished Prime Ministers, is its “community sense.” What the nations share, reasoned New Zealand’s late Prime Minister Peter Eraser, is “independence, with something added.” To Winston Churchill, the Crown is “the mysterious link, the magic link” that binds its peoples.

No easy phrase can encompass the Commonwealth’s diverse but like-minded, vague sounding but specific, loosely linked but powerfully woven partnership of more than 700 million people on six continents. Last week Canada’s John Diefenbaker and Australia’s Robert Menzies warned that by ending the Commonwealth’s preferential trading agreements, Britain would cripple the Commonwealth itself. But there are many other concrete bonds between its members. Among them:

Legislation & Law. The common pattern of parliamentary procedure follows the British model, even to the traditional mace, wigs and dispatch boxes of Westminster. The 51-year-old Commonwealth Parliamentary Association shuttles a constant stream of M.P.s through legislative halls around the world. Though all of its former colonies do not share Britain’s respect for justice, the basis of the judiciary system is English common law everywhere except in Ceylon (where the precedent is Roman Dutch law). The most humble Nigerian native can, as a Commonwealth citizen, appeal to the mightiest judges in Britain through the Queen’s personally appointed Privy Council.

Education. For decades, wealthy Commonwealth students have journeyed to Britain’s great schools and universities for their education. Since the war, a growing number of scholarships has enabled the poorest and brightest youths to make the journey, boosted the number of Commonwealth students in Britain from 1,000 to 40,000. More and more English students are traveling to study in the Commonwealth, contributing to the interchange of ideas and techniques.

Defense. In military affairs there is no central organization to coordinate strategy. But most Commonwealth members use similar equipment (hence the significance of India’s intention to buy Russian MIGs), exchange officers even when foreign policies are in sharp contrast. Most Commonwealth officers are products of Sandhurst, the Imperial Defence College, and other English military schools.

Joined by the Crown, the pound sterling (except for Canada), and the heritage of English as a second or even first language, the Commonwealth’s commingling of custom, instinct and self-interest has somehow surmounted fierce disagreements over Suez and South Africa, Kashmir and the Congo, colonial policy and foreign relations, democracy and Communism—and, most significantly of all, Empire itself.

It should survive its present differences. It is, as Jawaharlal Nehru, who spent 23 years in and out of British jails, has observed, “an odd collection of nations which seems to prosper most in adversity.”