The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News,Morning News and The Echo. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1923. TRADE AND EMPIRE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 47, 24 February 1923, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1923. TRADE AND EMPIRE.

For the cause that lacks assistance, for the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we <sin do.

The opening of the British Industries , Fair on Monday was naturally made the occasion for many official references to i the desirability of extending inter-' Imperial trade, and Sir Joseph Cook i did well to remind his distinguished! audience of an interesting fact which ' British merchants and producers are, liable to forget, that Australia already j buys fl2 worth of British goods per; head of population annually. New Zea-1 land actually holds the record against i the world as Britain's best customer in ; proportion to the number of her inhabi-1 tante. But the order in which the vari- j ous Dominions stand as purchasers of, British goods is of less importance than I the well-established fact that the people ; of the oversea Dominions buy year by i year per head of population at least j twenty times the value of British goods j purchased by the average German or! Frenchman or Italian or American Here we have already established that! "community of material interest"' which, as the President of the Board of Trade j observed at the great Fair function, ia •o strong a bond of peace and unity. Enormous mutual advantages arc j already received by commerce between Britain and\thc Dominions: and it is i easy to conceive a system of Imperial reciprocity which would enhance these benefits and would at the same time draw tighter and| render more per- j manent and enduring those "silken ties'" which already bind the Empire firmly together. The recognition of a close connection between commercial an<T political unity was suggested in another part of our cable news this week, by some remarks recently made by the Lieutenant-Oover-nor of Manitoba. Discussing the trade connection between Canada and the United States he maintained that it would pay Canada better in every way

"to sell to and through the British Empire," than to entangle herself commercially with the American Republic. The United States are anxious to sell to Canada, but on the other hand they protect their own markets in the interests of the American producer against his Canadian rival, and thus the United I States tariff hae a highly adverse effect upon Canada's trade. But the observation that it would not only be more profitable but "safer ,, for Canada to confine herself to British markets indicates that in the opinion of the responsible authorities in the Great Dominion, there is an element of risk involved in the growth of closer commercial relations with the United States which might easily develop into closer political relations. The Canadians still remember that when the controversy over Mr. Taft's famous Reciprocity Bill was raging, one of the strongest arguments used in its favour on the American side of the border was that if the system of mutual concessions were once established it would draw the two countries closer together, and would ultimately mean the political absorption of Canada by the United States.

Of course, there are in Canada as in Britain, ami on this side of the world, men who honestly believe that the Empire will maintain its unity better without the creation of any mechanical system to aid in holding it ] together. But this view, while it tends! to depreciate the strength of that I material self-interest which is one of the : most potent of all the motives influenc- j ing human conduct, serves at the same time to be unduly optimistic in another! direction.* . For it appears to ignore the' existence of any disruptive forces tending to break up the Empire from within, while it is equally oblivious of tho dangers that may quite conceivably threaten it from without. What these centrifugal forces are, and the manner and extent of their operations, can be gathered, curiously enough, from two other news items to be found in our news columns this week. On the one hand we have an ex-President of the PanAmerican Union in a speech at Toronto warning the Canadians that "a definite and powerful movement" has been started to secure the inclusion of Canada

in the Pan-American League; which would mean in effect the ultimate withdrawal of Canada from the British Empire. On the other hand we find the Canadian Premier in a speech at Montreal insisting that Canada has a right to decide how far any international conflict in which Britain may be engaged concerns herself, and that the Dominion should feel compelled to participate in such a war only to the extent to which her interests are directly ailfeeted. We should like to sec the full text of this unfortunate statement before judging Mr. McKenzie King, but it is clearly intended as a criticism of Mr. Lloyd George's unwise appeal to the Dominions to intervene in the Near East last j year. It is at the same time a sign and I proof that the great Dominion already feels constrained to claim absolute independence of the British Foreign Office in regard to questions of international policy. Here is one element of danger; and the tendency of Canada to gravitate commercially and politically toward the United , States is another. How far would Imperial Reciprocity help to counteract such movements by merging the political and commercial interests of the Empire in one?