TRADE COMMISSIONERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 230, 28 September 1935, Page 8

TRADE COMMISSIONERS.

A HIGHLY SPECIALISED GAME.

(To the Editor.)

To appoint men of commercial and business experience to positions of trade commissioners was the idea underlying the most important question raised in the House by Mr. Wilkinson. The reply he received from the Government was to the effect that only members of the Public Service will be selected, and no men outside the service will be eligible. Civil servants, said Mr. Forbes, have any amount of commercial experience as well as special •training within the service. But civil servants cannot possibly have commercial knowledge gained by trial and practice of their own. I n that case they would cease to be civil servants. And there is no special training in the Government's Departments. The game of trade with other nations is just beginning for us. It is for us a very new game, and it is highly specialised. As a country we do not yet know the rules, while our competitors are seasoned men with scores of years of experience behind them. Unless we give attention to the wisdom of Mr. Wilkinson's words we shall come off as badly as any innocent novice, the victim of all-embracing bureaucratism. Trade with other nations is not for the narrow-visioned. The first principle is a broad outlook, and Departmental routine is suicide in foreign commerce. With the difficulties nowadavs facing oversea transactions and endless obstacles arising out of the favourable-baiance-of-trade worship, the man selected for foreign trade must be trained for conflict and not for an easy routine. There is .110 reason why the search for new men to go forth and get new sales should be confined to only one very limited class of citizens, a class deprived from any possibility of having personal interests contacts and participation in the international exchange of goods. The selection should be extended amongst all classes of busness men who have learnt how to succeed amidst alien peoples and how to hold their own against drawbacks and trade veterans abroad. . ALEXANDER S. TETZNER.