Conference Delegates in the South

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21908, 8 October 1936, Page 10

Conference Delegates in the South

The arrival this morning of the delegates to the Empire Chambers of Commerce Conference opens to them a programme of sight-seeing and entertainment in which, it is to be hoped, they will find the pleasure of the conference extended and its profit still contributed to. They

have been most welcome visitors to New Zealand; they may be assured of the particular welcome of the south. It is easy, of course, to misconceive a little the scope and purpose of the conference, to fall into the error of thinking that, as it has met in New Zealand, this Dominion’s interests are its special concern; and the error may even survive the reading of the reports which show the full range of the problems discussed and the breadth of view taken of them. Yet the error holds a seed of truth. The delegates cannot have failed to pay close attention to the economic life an<J structure of the Dominion in which they have been brought together, the closer, perhaps,, because of the strikingly experimental stage through which they observe it to be passing. And as critical observers—critical in the friendly sense of the word—they Ijave as good opportunities outside the conference rooms as in them, or better. It is encouraging, even if rather selfishly so, to know that they will not become the guests of the south and sit at tea-tables or drive over the hills and plains without learning, in one degree or another, something more about the industrial and commercial organisation of the country, its difficulties and advantages, achievements and failures, hopes and objects and—no doubt—illusions and errors. They will not do this, either, without sowing in the Dominion the better understanding that they are gaining; that is, of the divergencies of interest which exist and must be allowed for and reconciled, so far as is possible, in the pursuit of an Imperial economic policy resting on common interests and true sympathy. In these easier days, following the laborious ones of the Wellington sessions, much may be built on the success founded there; and the good wishes of the South Island are extended to the visiting delegates with its welcome.