Word: commonwealth
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Commonwealth of Nations* is one of the largest associations known to history -and one of the most difficult for the rest of the world to understand. It binds together 580 million people in all parts of the world in common trade, common defense, and-up to a point-a common outlook on life. The Commonwealth nations are not joined by formal treaties. They are free to leave any time. The forces which hold them together are as subtle, delicate and elusive to the prying outsider as the forces which bind the atom. The one formal, legal Commonwealth bond: the British...
...London last week, six Prime Ministers and one Foreign Minister from the Commonwealth Nations joined British Prime Minister Clement Attlee to fret over a problem that might rudely upset the Commonwealth's finely adjusted balances. The problem was posed by the fact that India, now a free dominion within the Commonwealth, had declared her intention of severing her connection with the Crown; she would become an "independent sovereign republic" next August...
Hard Dilemma. But at the same time India wanted to stay in the Commonwealth fold. She could ill afford to lose British economic, military and technical help. The British in India today, now that they no longer rule, are more popular than ever before. Living alone in the world does not look inviting, with the Communist colossus on India's northern border. Nearer to home, India is confronted with the terrible warning of Burma which fell into chaos and civil war after rashly severing all Commonwealth ties...
Among other members of the Commonwealth India's position had created powerful misgivings. From South Africa, fiery ex-Prime Minister, Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts, had warned: "Clearly India wishes to retain as an independent republic . . . some of the benefits and advantages of Commonwealth connection . . . My personal view is that there is no middle course between Crown and republic, between in & out of the Commonwealth ... If in some nebulous and muddled way you can be both in & out of it, the whole concept of Commonwealth goes and what remains is mere name without substance, the grin without...
...Harmonies. Smuts's argument sounded logical enough, but ordinary logic does not rule the Commonwealth. Britain and the other Commonwealth nations wanted India in the family, no matter how nebulous the arrangement. For over a week, the Ministers debated the issue with India's sad-eyed Prime Minister