Evening Post. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1930. NOT HUMBUG BUT NERVE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 134, 4 December 1930, Page 8

Evening Post. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1930. NOT HUMBUG BUT NERVE

The Canadian Prime Minister is highly indignant because the tariff proposals which he submitted to the Imperial Conference, and which the British Government very naturally rejected, have been incautiously described by a British Minister as "humbug." The term should not have been used, because, while in no way strengthening the British case, it suggests an imputation which was doubtless not intended and was certainly quite irrelevant. The proposals had to be judged by their effects and not by the motives or supposed motives of the proposer. The absurdity of suggesting that they can have been framed with intent to deceive is indeed so patent that Mr. Thomas would have been wise to repudiate that construction as soon as the term was challenged. It is probable that Mr. Bennett is almost as simple-minded as our Mr. Forbes, and at the same time just as incapable of seeing that there may be more than one side to a complicated question, though it is clear that in his election speeches he has an embarrassing past from which Mr. Forbes is completely free. It was, however, not with Mr. Bennett's election speeches but with his resolution that the Imperial Conference was concerned, and, except for a single point which was soon cleared up, its terms were clear enough and could deceive nobody. Though, with the blind partisanship in which it lately seems to have exceeded the "Morning Post," the "Daily Telegraph" describes the Canadian Prime Minister's reply to Mr. Thomas as "a crushing retort," it is really a very poor piece of dialectics. The dictionary meaning of "humbug"—the meaning which Mr. Snowden failed to quote when he referred to the vogue of the term "with the people of taste and fashion"— might easily have been so pressed home as to induce Mr. Thomas to qualify or withdraw, but this was not done. On the other hand, the alleged contradiction between the Minister's attitude in the House of Commons and his attitude at the close of the Conference was made the subject of some sophistical and perfectly futile comment. Mr. Bennett says that the delegates, of whom Mr. Thomas was of course one, separated "in the earnest desire and hope" that the Ottawa Conference might discover a basis for economic unity, and that Mr. Thomas had now "condemned a principle which all the Dominions approved," without suggesting any alternative. It is sheer nonsense to suggest that in assenting to the Ottawa Conference Mr. Thomas was compromising his Government's views on Free Trade or undertaking to hold them in abeyance in the meanwhile, nor is it true lhat he had nothing to say in his speech last week about any non-iiscal alternatives. The fact is that there is not the slightest hope of making any progress with the tariff problem at the Ottawa Conference unless by that time the present Free Trade Government in Great Britain has been replaced by a Protectionist Government, and that, failing this, the Ottawa Conference must concentrate on the non-fiscal aids to unity which may receive a better consideration if the tariff is out of the way. It is more in sorrow than in anger that Mr. Bennett arrives at the conclusion that there is "little hope that any agreement Canada may reach with the Dominions will include the United Kingdom." , Time, he says, is running against vs. If Canada's proposal is to be thus contemptuously rejected, Canadians can only embrace other means at hand of further strengthening her economic position. This is plain talk, and much more like the tone of Mr. Bennett's election speeches than anything he had previously said in London. To outsiders it was a surprise to find Mr. Mackenzie King and his colleagues coming before the electors as Imperialists and strongly advocating the genuine policy of British preference which their Budget had done much to promote. Conversely, under the leadership of Mr. Bennett, the Conservatives, who had been the traditional champions of Imperialism, were denouncing the preferences already granted as going too far, and arguing that the interests of Canada were being betrayed by the Liberal Government. The attitude of the Conservative leader was described in the Canadian article of the September "Round Table" as follows: — During the campaign Mr. Bennett has emerged as a forthright economic nationalist, whose affection for the Empire may bo strong, but is subordinate to his passionate zeal for the improvement of the fortunes of his native Canada. He has repeatedly attacked the preferential features of the Bndget as a sacrifice of Canadian industrial interests without any, adequate

recompense), and has announced that, j f he is returned to power, he will insist at tho approaching Imperial Conference that Britain grunt a reciprocal preference or forfeit tho special privileges which she now enjoys under tho Canadian tariff. We are indebted to the same source for the following quotation from the speech in which Mr. Bennett had opened his Western campaign at Winnipeg:— v What right has the Government, by its premature unreasoned action, to imperil the success of tho Imperial Conference? When our Canadian representatives moot with those of other parts of the Empire, they will do so, if I have the honour of tho instructing of them, with tho principle definitely in mind that the future of tho Empire rests upon the upbuilding of Canada. They must also approach the problem with the fixed idea that there can be no treaty for Empire trade which does not ensure tho proper safeguarding of the agricultural, industrial, and other workers of Canada. It was, therefore, not an olive branch but a big stick that this militant Canadian was to take with him to the Imperial Conference if the electors gave him the chance. .But when the chance came the role of Canadian Conservatism was again reversed. It was an offer and not a threat that Mr. Bennett submitted to the Conference on the Bth October. The time for action has come, he said. I offer all parts of the Empire preference in Canada, in exchange for similar preference in their markets, based on the addition of a 10 per cent, increase flexibly applicable to general tariffs. It was a very easy offer for any of the highly-protected Dominions to make, but probably few people iv this country understood what a paltry offer it was. A 10 per cent, increase in the tariff was naturally taken to mean 10 per cent, "ad valorem," but it was soon explained in London— though not, we believe, here—that a 10 per cent, increase of existing duties was all that was intended. If the Canadian general tariff represents, say, 30 per cent, this offer amounted not to 10 per cent, but to 3! There is something at once comic and pathetic about the ecstasy with which this princely offer was received, not merely by the Empire Crusaders but by such a level-headed man as Mr. Baldwin. It was not for them, however, to accept it; a Free Trade Government, honouring its election pledges with what Lord Hailsham, formerly the Keeper of the King's Conscience, is pleased to describe as "bigotry and pedantry," has rejected it; and Britain must suffer the consequences. After all the restraints of his two months of London life, Mr. Bennett is now himself again. He has stripped the foliage from his olive branch and revealed a stick of a size unsuspected by those who had not read his election speeches. The offer has once more become a threat. If Canada's proposal is to be thus contemptuously rejected, Canadians can only embrace other means at hand of further strengthening her economic position. Mr. Bennett might try Germany, with whom South Africa has already made a preferential deal, or the United States, with whom it has not made a promising start; and there are dozens of others whom he might invite to the Ottawa Conference in Britain's place. Will he do it?, We have our doubts. It is not that we regard Mr. Bennett's threat, any more than his offer, as "humbug." We prefer to regard it as, in the words of the "Manitoba Free Press," which we quoted yesterday, an exhibition on an unexampled scale of what is popularly termed nerve, and to believe that his bark is worse than his bite.