Britain First.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20090, 20 November 1930, Page 10

Britain First.

It is painful, but distinctly salutary, to read the comments of some of the English newspapers on the speeches of Dominion delegates to the Imperial Conference. The Conference had of course only begun when this Peek's mail left London, but there was so little cha. ge afterwards in Dominion " de- " mands" that there iB not likely to have been much in the Homeland's journalistic " refusals.*' further, there is not much Comfort in the fact that the' sharpest critioisms appear, generally, in the ttiost Jiciil journals. When a journal like the Economist suggests that the offer of the Dominions was fourpenc for ninepence, and that British statesmen could hardly be expected to b enthusiastically grateful, it is time to ask ourselves precisely what we did offer. It is not sufficient, and indeed not trtte, to say that we offered an extension, to any limit acceptabl. to the Homeland, of existing Imperial preferences. The Economist's summary of Canada's offer, for example, was this (Canada speaking): Revolutionise your fiscal policy, put duties on primary foodstuffs imported from foreign countries, in order to ad mit under preferential rates larger quantities of Canadian wheat, and we will give your manufactured goods, not lower duties, but a preference conditioned by the further raising of our own tariff barriers against the rest of fhe world.

We have italicised the last three linos to emphasise a fact that is not often remembered; and although Canada is not the overseas Empire, its policy differs from our own only in the height' of its preferential wall. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all ask Britain ti begin bargaining on the top of the "wall, and rule out discussion of its prescht height. When Britain says th&t shti would be glad to consider

having depressions made here and there to make exchange easier, the Dominions in effect, and Canada in plain words, sav that the essence of their fiscal policies is " Our own people first." Of course it is. But the purpose of the Imperial Conference (on the economic side) was to try to discover via media between the insistence of the Dominions on high protection and of the Homeland on cheap food. If the Dominions did not understand this, and heartily accept it, they should never have gone to London at all.