One or two matters I may clear up, which are not mentioned in this Declaration. One of these, as I have said, is that the King has no functions at all. This was cleared up in the course of our proceedings; it has no doubt been recorded in the minutes of the Conference in London. Another point was that one of the objects of this kind of Commonwealth association is now to create a status which is something between being completely foreign and being of one nationality. Obviously the Commonwealth countries belong to different nations. There are different nationalities. Normally either you have a common nationality or you are foreign. There is no intermediate stage. Up till now in this Commonwealth or the British Commonwealth of Nations, there was a binding link, which was allegiance to the King. With the link, therefore in a sense there was common nationality in a broad way. That snaps, that ends when we become a Republic, and if we should desire to give a certain preference or a certain privilege to any one of these countries, we would normally be precluded from doing so because of what is called the “most favoured nation clause” that every country would be as much foreign as any other country. Now, we want to take away that foreignness, keeping in our own hands what, if any, privileges or preference we can give to another country. That is a matter entirely for two countries to decide by treaty or arrangement, so that we create a new state of affairs-or we try to create it-that the other countries, although in a sense foreign, are nevertheless not completely foreign. I do not quite know how we shall proceed to deal with this matter at a later stage. That is for the House to decide-that is to say, to take the right, only the right to deal with Commonwealth countries, should we so choose, in regard to certain preferences or privileges. What they are to be, all that, of course, we shall in each case be the judge ourselves. Apart from these facts there has nothing been decided in secret or otherwise which has not been put before the public.
