A CONFIDENT VIEW.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17097, 21 February 1916, Page 6

A CONFIDENT VIEW.

It is unusual to find a British Minister discussing what is to happen after the war, and for that, reason we may be tempted to read the interview with Mr Bona I- Law. which is cabled this morning, as a distinctly favourable symptom. Mis reference io the campaigns in progress was brief and, of course, he made no prophecy concerning tlio duration of the war, but it would have been impossible for him to talk of important economic and fiscal developments if he did not, feel that the turning-point in the campaigns had already been reached. One confident assertion that he. permitted himself to make was that the war had settled the fiscal controversy in the Mother Country. Tt. is obvious that, the great burden of the charges on the war loan will not be met by the taxation methods hitherto obtaining, and we may take it that a. substantial revenueproducing tariff is inevitable. Once this principle is accepted, it will follow as a matter of course that, preference will be given to the Oversea Dominions and to the Allies of Britain, and inevitably also the tariff will be used in the commercial struggle that will follow the war. Mr Bonar Law spoke of the revolution that British industries have undergone under the pressure of war conditions, and his hope is that in the readjustment of industrial methods and enterprises, when the demand for war supplies ceases, the British manufacturers will continue, to show the courage and adaptability that have characterised them during the past twelve months. Mr Law spoke, too, of the establishment, of a league of peace, aiming at, the reduction of armaments and enforcement of a. sane code of international rules, hut of necessity his words were vague and not. very convincing. Of more immediate interest was his declaration regarding the financial sid'e of the gre.it struggle. Britain's resources, he declared, were so huge that she had not yet begun to feel the strain, although the cost of waging the war is already running into thousands of millions. "We arc drawing on stored up wealth and productive resources," he said, " without, straining our capacity to pay or reaching the limit, of selfsacrifice." And he might have added that Britain was meeting the charges by progressive increases of taxation, an example that nqne of the other belligerents has ventured to follow, except in the most modest, degree. If we needed proof of the Mother Country's capacity to bear the burden we might find it in the appeals for personal economy. In spite of the aggregation of war debt and in spite of the huge increases in taxation, the demand for luxuries appears to be as keen as in times of peace, and' the supply is limited only by the capacity of the ships engaged in foreign trade. The. Government has been compelled to take arbitrary steps to prevent the importation of unnecessary goods, so that cargo space may be available for essential foodstuffs and raw materials. The Minister's tribute to the part played by the oversea. Dominions in the war will perhaps impress the colonial reader as being rather extravagant, but the truth is probably that facts which the colonial peoples have been taking for granted have never been quite grasped by the people, oven by the statesmen? of the Old Country To men who did not know the spirit of the Dominions, their response to the call of the Mother Country may well have proved unexpectedly impressive and inspiring; and we may perhaps prophesy that the Dominions will never again be mfsunderstood, at any rate to the old extent, by Downing Street or by the world at large.