PACIFIC SHIPPING

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 24, 23 October 1936, Page 8

PACIFIC SHIPPING

Long-drawn-out discussions by the New Zealand, the Australian and the British Governments, with the Canadian Government participating as a secondarily interested party, lie behind the Protection of British Shipping Bill, introduced in the House of Representatives yesterday. Although it uses no names, the Bill is directed against the United States of America, a friendly Power with whom Australia and New Zealand have much in common, and toward whom they must be increasingly drawn as the centre of gravity of world affairs moves from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. British ships running from Australia and New Zealand to the American Pacific Coast are not allowed to carry passengers or cargo between Honolulu and the mainland. Yet American ships using the same route not only.enjoy a monopoly of this purely American trade, but also share in the carriage of goods and passengers between Auckland and Sydney. By the present Bill, which is to be matched by one of similar intent in Australia. New Zealand takes power to apply to American shipping between British ports at this end of the Pacific run the restrictions which already apply to British shipping between ports at the American end of the run. There is nothing unfair about that. We are proposing to treat the United States as she has for long treated us. The happiest features about the Bill are that it does not immediately prescribe restrictions (but only gives the Government power to inflict them if need be) and that its terms have been communicated in advance to the United States Government with an assurance that retrictionsAvill not be applied until it has had an opportunity of making anv suggestions it desires to make. There is still hope, therefore, of "a more amicable settlement than will be possible through reprisals. Nevertheless, the British Governments concerned ought to set a time limit on further negotiations. This affair has dragged along far too long already. Some such Bill as the present ought to have been passed several years ago. The survival of British shipping in the Pacific is more than an item of national prestige. It is vital to our system of Imperial communications: and, however much we may wish to avoid playing tit for tat with a friendly neighbour, the New Zealand Government’s duty, both to its own people and to the peoples of the other units of the Commonwealth, is to take early steps to keep that system intact.