The Dominion FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 1934. A FAMILY CONCLAVE

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 221, 15 June 1934, Page 10

The Dominion FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 1934. A FAMILY CONCLAVE

It is suggested in a cable message to-day that the presence of the overseas Premiers in London . for the King’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations should be made the occasion for an Imperial family conclave to discuss the monetary system. If the idea is adopted it is to be hoped that the agenda will be more comprehensive in scope. Sir Arthur Shirley Benn, M.P., who is president of the Council of the Federated Empire Chambers of Commerce, has made a somewhat significant observation in this particular connection. The federation, he said, though keenly advocating inter-imperial trade, never tried to exclude foreign trade. “But,” he added, “there is a •possibility that in the not remote future we will have no choice in the matter.” /

This is an indirect reference to a contingency more explicitly stated by Dr. Norwood in Wellington on Wednesday in a reference to the tendency toward self-sufficiency discernible among the nonEuropean nations, in the past a vast and lucrative field for British foreign trading. It has been an article of British policy that while inter-Imperial trading should be encouraged and developed in every possible way, Britain could not turn her back on her foreign trade connection. But suppose, as Sir Arthur Benn has hinted, such a position should be forced upon her as the result of policies of selfsufficiency on the part of her present foreign nation customers? There is a school of opinion-in Britain which believes in a policy of Imperial self-sufficiency, and it may possibly gain support as the result of such observations as that voiced by Sir Arthur Benn. It believes in Empire free trade, and the closed door to foreign trade.

The advocates of this policy point out that in 1932 Russia’s exports to England exceeded her purchases from that country by more than lOj millions; Sweden’s by 63 millions; Denmark’s by 30| millions; Germany’s by 15 millions; the Netherlands by 9% millions; Belgium’s by 7£ millions; the United States by over 68 millions; and Argentina by over 40 millions (less approximately 10 per cent, for invisible exports). No doubt these proportions have been altered as the result of the operation of trade treaties negotiated since, but, says a writer in the British Empire Review, “we shall never again secure a dominant position in the world’s trade; every country has gone too far in providing its own requirements, and our only hope is to build up the best exchange of trade between the countries of the Empire where goods can always be produced where they are most advantageous to produce, and where conditions with regard to wages and conditions of living are more or less eqtial. While we want all the trade we can get with foreign countries,” he adds, “we shall be pursuing a mirage if we try to capture foreign trade to the extent we have in the past, and we shall progress in that direction only at the expense of the British people and the British Empire.”

It is therefore a matter for serious question whether the foreign trade situation from the British point of view has not changed to an extent that should claim the attention of an Imperial Conference. The position may not be of sufficient urgency at present to warrant convening a special conference, but there is reason and justification for improving an occasion when the overseas Premiers will be in London in any case and arranging for a round table discussion on this and cognate matters.