The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1929. FREE TRADE AND EMPIRE.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 256, 29 October 1929, Page 6

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

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1929. FREE TRADE AND EMPIRE.

for the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistant*, For the future in the distance, And the good that toe can do.

Toward tlie end of June, Lord Beaverbrook, one of the most powerful of British newspaper proprietors, created a sensation by publicly announcing in the "Sunday Express" that, though he had hitherto neglected the duty of promoting the unification of the Empire, he now proposed to devote himself to this great task. A fortnight later he endorsed Lord Melchett's dictum that ''Free Trade within the Empire is not an unattainable ideal," and proceeded to argue.that it would be possible to bind the Empire together more closely than ever by the ties of common material interest if Britain's traditional prejudice against import duties were once allayed.

With characteristic energy Lord Beaverbrook has already organised a movement on the lines that his letters have indicated. Last July he quoted with approval a statement by Mr. Reginald McKenna that "he would be willing to concede a tax on foreign wheat and meat if we could obtain free entry for our goods to the markets of the Dominions and the Colonies." This is the objective toward which these "Empire Crusaders" are now supposed to be working; and their manifesto, which has just been published in Canada, discloses thenpurposes and in general terms their methods.

The keynote of the new Imperial policy is that "food from the Empire shall enter Britain absolutely free and unhampered." But to provide Britain with an adequate food supply, the agriculturists and pastoralists of the Empire must be encouraged to enlarge their output, and this can be effected only by providing for them a secure footing and a permanent demand in the British market. This means the practical exclusion of their foreign competitors, and this can be done by "imposing a tax on foreign wheat and meat," in return for which the Dominions are to admit British goods into their markets duty free. This programme is, in effect, a revival of the proposal for Imperial Reciprocity which Mr. Chamberlain advocated a generation ago, and though Lord Beaverbrook cannot claim originality for his scheme, he deserves credit for his courage in resuscitating the movement.

It is obvious at the outset that one of the great difficulties is the proposed import duty on foreign food supplies. It is true, as Mr. Chamberlain showed 27 years ago, that the increased production of the Empire would ensure a fall in food prices; that the Dominions could afford to sell their food products at a lower price and yet make a great profit on an enlarged turnover; and that the British consumer could afford to pay even a higher price for food, if that were necessary, on the assumption that a tax on foreign imports improved British industrial conditions, provided more employment and distributed more purchasing power among the workers. Yet the traditional dislike to food taxes at Home represents an obstacle that may still prove unsurmountable. On the other hand, Lord Beaverbrook and his friends seem to have underestimated the difficulties involved in any attempt to remove protective duties in the Dominions. It is easy to say that the Crusaders do not propose "to destroy any industry now existing in any part of the Empire." But it will be virtually impossible to persuade the colonial worker and the colonial manufacturer that the protective duties by which their industries have been built up should now be reduced or abolished to suit Britain's needs. With all respect for Lord Beaverbrook's intention's, Ave cannot see that his policy has even as good a chance ot success as the Chamberlain programme which failed 25 years ago.