Evening Post. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1914. FOR AUSTRALASIAN AGREEMENT

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 150, 22 December 1914, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1914. FOR AUSTRALASIAN AGREEMENT

The announcement that the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth is to pay New Zealand a visit will be received with general satisfaction. Visits to Australia by our own Prime Ministers are common enough, since it lies on one of the main thoroughfares to the Old Country to which they are called at least once in four years by the Imperial Conference. But the most memorable visit of the kind was that paid by Mr. Seddon in 1906. On that occasion our Premier did not take Australia as a mere stepping-stone on the way to England. Australia was the sole objective of what proved to be Mr. Seddon's last joui-ney. Nominally he went there for a well-earned rest on the eve of the first session of a new Parliament ; • actually he devoted himself to public affairs as laboriously as though he had remained in New Zealand with a General Election looming not a great way ahead. During what was something like a triumphal tour Mr. Seddon' s restless mind was busy with a scheme of fiscal reciprocity between Australia and New Zealand and with plans for the Imperial Conference to be held in the following year. Mr. Seddon did not live to realise those projects, and it is a remarkable thing that more than eight years after his death fiscal reciprocity with the country that is nearest to us and most closely akin to us is not yet an accomplished fact. The two Mr. Fishers were understood to have come to an agreement when our Mr. Fisher visited Australia last year ; but the defeat of the Australian MiS Fisher's Government at the General Election which followed shortly afterwards prevented the prosecution and even the publication of the scheme. Now that the whirligig of time has put Australia's Mr. Fisher into office again and is bringing him to New Zealand, it has also put his New Zealand namesake out of politics and left his colleagues hanging to power by a very fragile thread. But fortunately this ma.tter of tariff reciprocity with Australia is not a personal nor even a party matter, so far as New Zealand is concerned, and Mr. Andrew Fisher is likely to find Sir Joseph Ward just as sympathetic as Mr. Massey or any of his colleagues. The tariff is, however, far from the most important of the matters that require adjustment between the two countries. It is not even mentioned among the declared objects of the Commonwealth Prime Minister's visit as re-porte-d in the cable message from Melbourne yesterday, though we may be quite sure that it will receive the attention it deserves. What he desires particularly is to consult our own Government with regard to defence and to push proposals for co-operating in a local navy. These are by far the biggest issues on which a close understanding and a definite co-operation between the two countries are desirable, and here unfortunately the mind of this country is not so clear and the parties speak with discordant voices. So far indeed as military co-operation is concerned, there is no disagreement, but there is not a great deal to be done, and that little is for the most part being carried out satisfactorily with the approval of both parties. But in the vital matter of naval defence the divergence between them is very wide. It sometimes seems as though Sir Joseph Ward had learnt nothing from the course of events in the Pacific Ocean in the five years that have passed since the Imperial Defence Conference. Even the striking developments of the last four months appeared to have made no impression upon him — our dependence upon Australia's warships for the safe conduct of our troops to Samoa and for the protection of our commerce and our ports, and the Empire's rapturous gratitude to her for the destruction of the Emden. Yet even the most Conservative of Imperialists must have learned something from this experience. They have learned not to sneer at Australia's Navy. They have even learned to admire it, and from admiration to imitation, would be a smallei?

step than that which they have already taken. The delusion thafc Australia's self-reliance would spell disintegration has been dissipated as completely as the idea that it would spell inefficiency. Never was New Zealand in a better mood to give a fair and sympathetic hearing to a presentation of Australia's case. Publicly at any rate Mr. Andrew Fisher will have to move warily in dealing with what is to a large extent a party issue in this country. But an exposition of what the Commonwealth has done and hopes to do would be of the utmost value "in making the two countries better acquainted and in developing that mutual sympathy which we must al] desire to create, even if we cannot all see our way to advocate that active co-operation which is impossible without an initiative and a resDonsibility of our own. For our Labour Party in particular Mr. Fisher's visit can do nothing but good. He is as stalwart a champion of Labour as the best, of them, but he leads a Labour Party and a- Labour Government which see that the only way to keep Australia from turning yellow is by the development of her Army and Navy. Our Labour Party has already declared for " cooperation with the" Commonwealth of Australia for naval defence " ; and Mr. Fisher's visit should stimulate it to urge Sir Joseph Ward in the same direction-.