EMPIRE TARIFFS

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 May 1924, Page 5

EMPIRE TARIFFS

THE * AUSTR ALIAN VIEWPOINT.

(Australian and N.Z. Cable Association?

LONDON, May 6. .At the Imperial Industries Club a dinner, Sir James Allen presided. Mr J. L. McDougall said that owing to the unfortunate aftermath of' tl<e Economic Clonference, Australia would probably have to extend the British paper tariff preference to Canada. He asserted the paper, cotton, woollens, and dyes duties well illustrated the deliberate shelter from foreign competition given to British trade by the Australian preferences. He asked would Britain realise that an orderly policy of Empire development might be the only safeguard in an era of intensified industrial coni' petition which the restoration of Europe involve. It was essential, if Empire development was to be safe in the hands of the Britisn Democracy that it should be made clear that Imperial policy was never imperious and that the ideals of the Empires of Spain or Portugal, with their prohibitions of trade to all foreigners, con hi never be revived, and that they did not intend to follow the 100 per cent, discrimination against foreigners which America and Japan now employed in their dependencies. The British ideal must be an Empire as self-dependent as possible, concerning ’.essential foodstuffs and raw materials. With the Common; wealth, British trade would reasonably be preferred, but foreign competition would’ not be excluded. It was most important that the Empire should be a union of free peoples. With this ideal of Empire development they must win the affections of the British democracy and British Labour.

Sir «T. Cook said that Australia and New Zealand took up the position that they begged for nothing, but were conscious that it was not in the interest of the Empire' they should have t'p betalke themselvey Jo a course that now remained open to them. They felt that if the Empire was good enough to fight for, it was good enough to trade with .and they declined to apply strict mathematical economic considerations to the development 'of the Empire’s future. Rather they fell back upon the King’s statement that it was their duty, even at some sacrifice, to develop the family estate.