Mr. Amery and the Ottawa Conference.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20498, 17 March 1932, Page 10

Mr. Amery and the Ottawa Conference.

Mr Amery's speech 011 Empire trade, reported in this morning's cable news, reveals a view of the Ottawa Conference that can do nothing but harm and is, in effect, a revival of an economic philosophy that has already wrecked one British Empire. "If the Ottawa " Conference fails," he says, " the consequences will be disastrous to the "Empire, which will have begun the ''process of disruption." To speak of the Ottawa Conference in these terms is to imply that its goal is the creation of a self-sufficient Imperial -economic union, and that, as no one knows better than Mr Amery, is a dangerous illusion. The limits of Imperial economic cooperation are set'by the import, requirements of Great Britain on the one hand,, and by the fiscal policies of the Dominions on the other. Britain, for instance, cannot offer preferences on wool, which makes up a quarter of the total exports of Australia and New Zealand, and Canada will do nothing to wdanger her iron and steel industries.

The task of the' Conference is to find what trade agreements are possible within these limits, and there is no absolute standard that will justify calling the result either a success or a failure. Nor will the scope of the agreements reached be any guide to the reality of the sentiment that holds the Empire together, for the Empire is not merely a trading partnership, and there is an excellent precedent against regarding it as such. The process which Mr Amery calls " disruption " has been going on for half a century, and '.a not likely to be either hastened or arrested by what is done at Ottawa. It is astonishing also to have him suggesting that the British Government is not making a wholehearted effort to create a favourable atmosphere for the Conference. The new British tariff is the first realistic approach to fiscal co-operation that has so far been made, and until the Dominions show. a corresponding willingness to revise their own tariff policies, instead of offering fictitious preferences, criticism of the British Government's attitude is unreasonable and unfair.