ERROR ADMITTED

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 34, 3 November 1934, Page 7

ERROR ADMITTED

America’s Hour of Repentance TRADE BARRIERS Secretary of State’s Frank Review HARMFUL TARIFF POLICY President Seeking to Restore International Commerce By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. (Received November 2. 9.35 p.m.)

New York, November 1. Admitting that the ,United States had set a vicious example of nign tariffs, Mr. Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, to-night declared: “We have now repented.” “Extreme nationalism, if persisted in. is destined soon to wreck our entire structure of western civilisation,” he said in an address reatd to the Foreign Trade Association by Mr. Francis B. Sayre, Assistant Secretary of State. Mr. Hull is resting in Pinehurst recovering from bronchial trouble. “In entering upon negotiations for trade agreements authorised by the Act of June 12 this year we willingly and frankly admit that we erred in the past and that we have now repented,” said Mr. Hull. “Just as we set a vicious example by erecting trade barriers of high tariffs, which induced Others to follow us, so now We are asking other nations to join us in an attempt to undo thg damage our collective action has worked. We wish to break down all artificial and excessive impediments put in the way of world commerce not only in our own interest but for the benefit of all others as well, since only by restoring the trade of the whole world can individual countries hope to remain economically healthy for long?’ President Roosevelt in a telegram to Mr. James A. Farrell, chairman of the National Foreign Trade Council, said: “We are seeking to rehabilitate international commerce in a way that will benefit not a single nation but all nations; not a group of nations, but the whole world. The causes of the decline in the level of world trade are various, but among the most serious are unnecessary and artificial barriers which hamper a healthy interchange of commodities.” FUTURE OF SILVER - China Wants International Understanding New I’ork, November 1. An international understanding on the future of silver was demanded on Thursday by Mr. K. C. Li, president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. Addressing the National Foreign Trade Convention, he said such world accord was necessary “for the permanent good of silver, its producers, and international trade.” Mr. Li declared that he doubted whether the question of so-called maladministration of gold could be solved by introducing silver into lawful currency. He insisted that the sliver experiment was unsatisfactory in China. Dr. Koliang Yih, Consul-General for China at New York, said such doctrines as “Asia for the Asiatics” or “the Monroe Doctrine for Asia” were alien to conceptions of international intercourse. “We reject,” he said, “such national or regional isolation.”