"TRADE DISPUTE SETTLED"

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 154, 28 December 1936, Page 6

"TRADE DISPUTE SETTLED"

Australia and New Zealand have not yet won their spurs in diplomacy, but Tbkio and Melbourne cablegrams announcing settlement of the Austra-lian-Japanese trade dispute seem to terminate the first chapter of what may prove to be a very interesting diplomatic story. It is possible, indeed, that when the whole transaction comes to be weighed, Australia will be found to have fairly won her spurs in the great international game of negotiation, expostulation, and compromise. All the arts of the negotiator, and all the stronger forms of trade pressure, have been in evidence, and the fact that the Commonwealth Government faced the heaviest tariff and embargo guns that the older and stronger Power could bring to bear speaks volumes for Australian nerve, the disposition of the Canberra negotiators to stand firm can be doubted no longer, but the fact remains, of course, that they stood firm behind the protection of British strength? How the negotiation would have proceeded had there been no Britain is quite another question. The methods used by Japan in this fight indicate that she would overawe, in a trade dispute, any country whose nerve and sense of justice were unbacked. Who, of the two, has won the better bargain, and what the allround effects on wool will be, are yet to be demonstrated; but it is clearly proved that bargaining methods in the Pacific are going to be as keen as elsewhere in the world. Have New Zealanders and Australians given sufficient thought to the power-backing that a Government must have in order to hold its own in such encounters? There have been two good-will tours, if not more. They did not settle the dispute, but, now that it is settled, let us return to good will. .