VALUE OF COLONIES

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 182, 30 April 1936, Page 11

VALUE OF COLONIES

British Body’s Report London, April 28. The report of the Royal Institute'fif International Affairs on the value of colonies, which contends that their economic advantages are over-stated, asserts that the colonies relieve Britain of a deficiency of only 9 out of 34 basic raw materials and if another Power annexed the whole of the British Colonial Empire, apart from the Dominions, it would still have inadequate supplies of- raw materials, including several of the most important. The German Colonial Research Bureau’s claim that Tanganyika would support 9,000,000 people, coupled with Italy’s similar claims in Abyssinia, should be scrutinised in the light of the fact that the whole of Africa, after decades of colonisation, contains only 3.000,000 Europeans. Other statistics show little discrimination in favour of the Mother Countries. On the contrary, the principle of open access is fairly generally observed.