TRUST IN TRADE.

Grey River Argus, 20 April 1923, Page 5

TRUST IN TRADE.

TO MAINTAIN EMPIRE. MOTIVE OF BRITISH POLICY. (Received April 19, 8.30 p.m.) LONDON, April 19. Colonel Amery, speaking at thfJunior Constitutional Club, adumbrated the Government’s policy relating to tariff preference, migration, settlement, trade preference, finance, and defence. He referred to the coming Imperial Economic Conference. He described it as affording an opportunity for laying a foundation for a future economic superstructure for the Empire. Mere financial stabilisation, he said, would not get rid of the Empire’s burdens. They must broaden the shoulders which must bear those burdens. This meant Imperial economic co-operation in responsibilities, with joint participation in benefits. Britain, he said, must always be the industrial unit for the United Kingdom. He hope<l that Britain also would remain the industrial unit for the Empire. That was the basis upon which, he urged, the future Imperial

pyramid must be built. Their Empire Settlement Act was the first measure in British history which endeavoured to secure a better distribution of people, to the mutual benefit of over populated Britain ami the under populated Dominions. If that measure was worked wholeheartedly, it would be of advantage to those Dominions now suffering from a shortage uf population. Capital would not flow to the Dominions, he argued, unless the Dominions were guaranteed a better and a bigger market for the Dominions’ exports to production of which the capital was devoted. The effective redistribution of man-power and money-power was necessarily dependent on providing markets for the utilisation of products resulting from the co-operation of men and money in the undeveloped Domi-

nions. Towards that end a policy of Imperial preference would contribute. Referring to defence, Colonel Amery said that, only as an empire, not as the United Kingdom, had the war been won. He contended that, only as the Empire could peace be maintained. The inviolability of the Pacific was possible only by united action by the countries bordering that ocean. It was ini possible that tin* responsibility should be borne solely by Britain. It was impossible to move the basis from the British Isles to the boundless areas of the Empire without the co-operation of the Dominions, who were equally interested with Britain in the maintenance of the integrity of the Empire.