Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley reached out a cautious leg in the House of Commons last week to foot a ball President Roosevelt had booted his way nine months before. Britain, he said, had decided to convert her colonial empire into a cooperative empirebut it will be an empire still. Oliver Stanley's words were a quieter echo of Churchill's growl last Armistice Day: "I did not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire." Changes in the Empire, it was clear, would have to be gradual.
Proposal. President Roosevelt had casually mentioned at a...