Evening Post. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1923. MR. BRUCE'S PROPOSALS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1923, Page 6

Evening Post. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1923. MR. BRUCE'S PROPOSALS

Mr. Bruce's speech at the Economic Conference, as reported by cable on Thursday, opened with an admirable example of tactful understatement. "He pointed out that other countries protected their own industries by a tariff, and therefore they could not feel resentment if Britain did likewise." It was indeed "a happy prologue to the swelling act of his Imperial theme," the purport of which was that Britain must adopt a protective policy in the interest of the Dominions, and that they would feel resentment if she did not. We say that this was the purport of Mr. Bruce's speech, though his phraseology, even when not so heavily draped in tact as his opening statement, was never so blunt as ours. "The keynote of every question that the Imperial Economic Conference had to consider," the report proceeds, " was the establishment of markets for the Dominions." British statesmen might surely be excused for supposing that Britain's markets are not entirely beyond the province of the Conference, nor are they entirely forbidden by Mr. Bruce. He does not deny them this liberty, but no false delicacy restrains him from advising them how to-use it. "In order to achieve true Empire development," he says, " they had to realise that agriculture in Britain and the Dominions cannot flourish long if Britain remains the dump-ing-ground for foreign surplus." Mr. Bruce is fully qualified to speak for Australian agriculture, and would doubtless resent any outside advice on the subject as an unjustifiable intrusion into his province. Yet he does not shrink from a similar trespass upon what is plainly the province of the statesmen of Britain.

In one respect Mr. Bruce's method is an improvement upon that of his predecessors. He is quite frank about what he wants, he eschews the sorry pretence that preference is not protection but only a half-way house between protection and free trade, and in spite of his insistence upon the paramount importance of markets for the Dominions he avowedly makes the ' need of the British farmer for protection an essential part of his case. He may even be said to have made it his first essential. " The objectives to be borne in mind in any solution are," says Mr. Bruce, " first, .to assist the farmer; second, to encourage the Dominions producer; third, to safeguard the British consumer." As "farmer" is here distinguished from "Dominions producer," it is plainly the British farmer that Mr. Bruce has in view. Logically, he may be quite right, but from the standpoint of Imperial courtesy is he not quite wrong in pressing upon the statesmen and electors of Great Britain a revolutionary change in a fiscal system which is their sole concern, and with which he has no better right to interfere than, they have to interfere with the tariff of Australia? Australians are much more eager in the assertion of their independence, or virtual independence, than the people of this country, but the privileges which they claim for themselves must surely be conceded in equal measure to other parts of the Empire, not excluding the Mother Country herself. Or has the policy by which she once sought to govern the Empire from Downing Street been so far reversed by her pushing children that they now claim the right not merely to manage their own affairs exactly as they please, but also to meddle with hers whenever it suits their interest to do so ?

When the Dominions were asked to take part in the fiscal campaign so brilliantly launched by Mr. Joseph Chiimberiain twenty years ago,-we maintained that the preliminary question, viz., whether Britain was prepared to abandon free trade in favour of protection, was one for the British electors to decide without interference of any kind from the Dominions ; but that if this domestic issue was decided by the proper tribunal in favour of protection, the incidental question of preference would then be a subject for legitimate discussion and negotiation with the Dominions., We have never abandoned or modi-* fied that position, and we are at a loss to understand how anybody in the Dominions who understands how jealously they would resist any interference by Great Britain with their domestic policy can approve of the converse process. To say that preference is an Imperial question is no answer to our contention. Though preference is an Imperial question, protection, which to the British people is a matter of infinitely deeper concern, is a domestic question. Mr. Bruce's candour makes no attempt to conceal the distinction. What he asks for in the first place is "a protective tariff for British agriculture," and that is clearly a matter of domestic concern which it is for the British people to decide for themselves. The question of preference for the Dominions' produce, which is Mr. Bruce's ultimate objective, will only arise as aa incitientaJ issue if protection is carried.

The London Press is said to have been at first surprised into silence by tho thoioujjh-gijiiijr proposal* i" wJaioii M.v x Bruce Iws emulated the

part played by Mr. Deakin at the Imperial Conference of 1907. But the "Morning Post," which has so often played the part of Abdiel— "Among the faithless, faithful only be"—is an exception. In addition to a nine-column report of the speech, the "Morning Post" publishes a leading article i,n which it is described as "the biggest attack on the free trade system since the passing of Mr. Chamberlain." The article even goes so far as to liken the speech to the blast from the trumpets which brought down the walls of Jericho. Ecstasy of this kind is not sober criticism, and need not be treated as such. The "Westminster Gazette" gets nearer to the mark :

Mr. Bruce is quite frank about his tariff policy, for which we may be g,rax,eia\ to him. There is no pretence of being satisfied with the duties on peaches, apples, and plims, which our Government offers as a sop to colonial wishes. Mr. Bruce is out for a wholehog tariff, and scarcely veils his threat that if he does not get what lie seeks from us he will carry his goods elsewhere. Yet his whole scheme is one of shifting troubles from the shoulders of the Dominions' producer to those of the British consumer, already carrying a weight of taxation unequalled in the woi Id.

The walls of the free trade Jericho are not down yet, and a bitter and prolonged controversy is likely to precede their fall. In this controversy the Dominions will best consult their own interests and those of the Empire by declining to take a hand.