A BRIGHT NOTE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 22, 28 January 1929, Page 10

A BRIGHT NOTE

BRITAIN LEADS

TRADE OF THE' WORLD

CONDITIONS IN MALAY

Mr.-L. B. .Beale, His Majesty's Trade Commissioner for Now Zealand, returned to Wellington to-day by the Tahiti after an absence of a year on duty in the United Kingdom, and for the past four months on a special invostgiation of the trade of British Malaya.

".Liv the United Kingdom," said Mr. Bealc, "I found general and trade conditions steadily and surely improving. British credit stands at a very high level the world over, and her ability to enter competitive markets to advantage is clearly shown in the ease of British Malaya, which has no Customs tariff, and where goods from all countries enter on an equality. There

it was good to find that British motorcars, for instance, are imported in greater number and greater value than those of any other country; while British supremacy^ in' that wealthy Asiatic market in * machinery and all equipment of durability and dependability is most pronounced.

In the rubber and tin industry of British Malayd, which together account for over 00 per cent, of- tho great wealth of that country, British goods and equipment stand supreme.

While in the United Kingdom I visited over 400 factories, and found a record of steady and sure progress in. almost every industry. This is particularly true of electrical engineering, in which Brtiain holds a greater share of the world's trade than any other country. In motor-cars, in artificial silk, and in many other valuable lines of merchandise essential to our wellbeing as an exporting country. Despite all the difficulties under which Britain has laboured in the post-war years, it is our pride that we have met every obligation, paid every debt, owe no man, and are steadily regaining our proud position as the world's first trading nation. , "ABIDING- FAITH IN BRITAIN." "My tour of industrial Britain lias but strengthened the abiding faith I have always had in our race, our skill, and our enterprise. Of this, lam suro, that tho British race is not yet at the zenith of its power. ■ One has only to see tho beneficent result of our rule of British Malaya and other portions of the East, to realise that the British follow just and generous lines, of conduct in the administration of overseas countries. In British Malaya you have the greatest mixture of races, I suppose, that are congregated in any one portion of the globe—Chinese, Malays, Japanese., Indians, Europeans, and many others, trade and live under the perfect security of British rule; and I believe I am correct in saying that, next to Now Zealand, British Malaya, with her population almost entirely Asiatic, enjoys under our rule the second largest per capita trade in the world. This is due, of course, in the main, to her amazing production o? rubber and tin. British Malaya now produces over a third of the tin of the world, and close on to half tho rubber—two raw materials which in this ago are essential to the industry and life of the human race; and tho position of British Malaya to-day is but a foundation for a future of very much increased dimensions.

"It. was a most happy experience to

find during my trip around tho world the extraordinary high regard iv. which Now Zealand and Now Zealanilcrs are hold. I came across New Zealand engineers and New Zealand forest experts in many places carrying on their job with the greatest efficiency; and it was also most gratifying to a lover of sport to find the admiration for your New Zealand sportsmen in all places where clean sport is regarded as essential to tho welfare of a race. "Perhaps tho best part of my whole trip is my return to this happy and prosperous land. Nowhero have I found a happier people; and, as far as my information goes, no country is _on a higher economic basis than this fair Dominion of yours."