Lord Beaverbrook's Empire.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20427, 23 December 1931, Page 10

Lord Beaverbrook's Empire.

Lord Beaverbrook's new six-point policy to save Great Britain and the Empire, as reported yesterday morning from the columns of the Daily Express, does not show that he has learned anything fresh about the Empire or about economics, since be set out as a very ill-equipped Crusader. He wants to protect British agriculture and at the Same time to keep the door wide open, unconditionally, to anything and everything the Dominions care to deliver. He demands "indus- " trial protection "—which means high tariffs —and does not trouble his head about the consequences, either to -the British consumer or to the British exporter. He waves hia hand for a "Customs Union" of the Crown Colonies and Dependencies with Great Britain, so floating himself on a phrase over thiß towering obstacle. These parts of the Empire already send their goods free to the Home markets; they depend heavily on import tariffs for their revenue, and. draw most of it from British manufactures. What sort of agreement Lord Beaverbrook. is pleading for, in these circumstances, or what kind of compulsion he is ready to use, he has never made plain, and makes no plainer now by talking about a Cusl.o;;3 Union. Unless something is alloAvetl for his general prescription for India, and shipping, he has in fact nothing whatever to say beyond accepting Mr Bennett's famous offer of fourpence (perhaps) for niriepence (guaranteed) at the Imperial Conference. Not to "waste time" over bargaining with the Dominions or setting out " conditions," but to assure them at once and unreservedly of every benefit in full, is of course the quickest way of getting on with Lord Beaverbrook's kind of Empire, and the only way

that -would not at once bring it to wreck 011 the facts. And the facts are, that the Dominions have all gone a long way, one of them at least to extremes, in protecting their own manufactures, and that they are not at all ready to retreat. Canada has steadily made it harder for British goods to enter, so has Australia, so has New Zealand; and the extension of preferences is of much less use to British exporters than some people believe and others, generally politicians, pretend, for the lower, preferential rate is usually high enough to act as a protective barrier. Even Mr Forbes, about four months ago, referred shrewdly to preferential tariffs that are themselves prohibitive. Unfortunately, it is not quite possible to be sure that the next Economic Conference will make a better start than the last and go steadily on with useful work; for the British Press, according to a cable message to-day, appears to have read the results of the Australian and New Zealand elections as a mandate for some sort of Imperial economic policy, based on preferences. This was not their significance at all, and only harm can result from any spread of the belief, even if vague, that the Empire is now headed towards an exclusionist economic policy, whole hog or little pig. The business of the Conference is not to start with a policy, but to attack the facts, which were notoriously avoided last time, and to develop a policy from them.