The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 1930. THE PRESS CONFERENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 130, 4 June 1930, Page 6

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

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 1930. THE PRESS CONFERENCE.

For the cause that, lacks assistance, For tlie icrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

In a message of greeting to the delegates now meeting in London at the Imperial Press Conference, His Majesty the King has laid stress upon the value of these gatherings as a means of promoting sympathy and understanding between the component parts of the Empire. These words appear to have struck the keynote for the speeches of welcome and the responses of the visitors at the Guildhall on Monday. This conference is rightly regarded as a function of great Imperial importance and interest, and no pains will be spared by those responsible for its organisation to emphasise the close kinship that binds Britain to her dependencies beyond the sea. .

But while Major Astor, as chairman of the council of the Empire Press Union, spoke chiefly of the "living traditions of Britain*' and the faith in Britain's Imperial destiny still burning brightly at the Empire's heart, the Canadian delegate who responded for the Dominions, after a graceful acknowledgment of this "cordial welcome home," seized the opportunity to raise the question of an Imperial unity based not upon emotional or sentimental considerations alone, but upon "the community of material interests" as; well. Lieut.-Colonel J. 11. Woods, in his speech, made it quite clear that Canada at least is prepared to utilise every possible occasion to promote closer commercial relations between Britain and the Dominions, so as to build up Empire trade and commerce "as a single entity able to face the rest of the world on an equal basis."

Support was given to this appeal for the commercial unity of the Empire by Mr. Theodore Fink. Speaking for Australia, he insisted that the growth of Protective tariffs on foreign countries and the exclusion of British trade from foreign markets indicated the necessity for an economic alliance between Britain and the Dominions, and he pointed out that the foundations for such a system have already been laid by the colonial offers of fiscal preference to British goods. Mr. Fink further emphasised the need for the economic unity of the Empire by stressing the dangers to which the Imperial system' is now exposed through the changes in the political status of the Dominions that have taken place in recent years. The growth of autonomy and the natural desire for independence have, in Mr. Fink's opinion, rendered more difficult than ever "the problem of keeping together the British Commonwealth of Nations," and if the Press Conference does nothing, more than promote the solidarity and the permanence of our great Imperial federation, it will have fully justified the high hopes with which it was inaugurated.'