Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. SATURDAY, MARCH 19th, 1910. TARIFF REFORM.

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 March 1910, Page 2

Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. SATURDAY, MARCH 19th, 1910. TARIFF REFORM.

That the British associated Chamber of Commerce should, as recorded in yesterday’s cables, have carried a motion in Javor of (ariti reform, is of deep sigidicance at the present juncture, as it indicates that the trend of public opinion in the -Motherland is undoubtedly towards protection. It would indeed bo surprising if the next general election returned the tariff reform party to power, in which case the policy of freetrade, which remained without serious challenge for nearly sixty years, would he relegated to oblivion. The Germans view with alarm the possibility of Britain going over to protection, and a view on the subject is of considerable interest at the present juncture. In connection therewith, Mr.' Powell, author of “The Fight for the Highway of Nations,” contributes a highly interesting and informative article to Everybody’s Magazine, in which he declares war with Germany to be inevitable if Great Britain adopts protection and discards freetrado :—Germany’s main reason for going to war with England is protection, and perhaps that is the strongest reason of all. The most insistent demand of Germany to-day is a market for her goods, and it is in freetrade England that she finds it. But if the signs of the times point aright, England is not going to be freetrado much longer. %

triumph of tariff reform in England to j the minds of most thinking men is in- j evitable, but therein lies a most real j and very imminent danger. There are no negotiations which demand a deeper I knowledge of a special sort that those attendant upon the treaties of trade and commerce which follow in the wake of tariffs. Protection, if it does for England what its advocates claim for it, is going to hit Germany a staggering blow; with one stroke of the pen she will lose her best market, or rather markets, for she will lose those of South Africa, Australia, Canada, and India as well. Do you appreciate what it will mean to over-populated, overtaxed, over-productive Germany to have the British outlet for her goods closed by a tariff wall? It will mean bank- ] vuptev with a capital B, and nothing less. ' What then, you ask, will bo Germany’s answer to such a move on the part of England? The answer will come from the guns of her battleships and the rifles of her soldiers; the answer lies behind that toast which is drank in every ward-room and messhall in the Empire; the answer is War! 1 can hear you laugh, my sheltered friends, as you sit in your comfortable club window or by your cosy fireside, and say thal all this is nonsense, is visionary, an 1 that for a nation to declare war against a neighbor decides to change its fiscal policy from freetradc to protection smacks more of the Middle Ages, with their senseless quarrels ,than of this twentieth century civilisation, of which we are so proud. 1 repea t that protection in England means financial disaster in Germany, unless I very much escape • lie scope of the Imperial mind, is prepared to light for those life-sustaining - markets with every ship attcl every man. Why. she went, to war with France for i far less reason, and the ghosts of Bismarck and Von Moltke still flit through " the corridors of that old palace in the Wilhclmstrasse, still hover the chair of ’ the Foreign Minister, still stand behind the throne of the War Lord. In sueh case what think you these grim old men would have done?”