The Northern Advocate Daily WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1937. ECONOMIC VALUE OF COLONIES

Northern Advocate, 6 January 1937, Page 4

The Northern Advocate Daily

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1937. ECONOMIC VALUE OF COLONIES

Registered for transmission through the poet aa a Newspaper.

It is very evident, from statements reported in today’s cables, that Germany /intends to make persistent effort to secure the return of the colonies that were lost as a result of the Great War. The cry, “We must have colonies,” is one which makes strong appeal to German people, who doubtless have been led to believe, along with many others than Germans, that colonies are necessarily assets in the economic sense. Such believers would do well to read a recent number of that excellent American quarterly, “Foreign Affairs,” in which is printed a suggestive review of this question, “The most discouraging thing .that can be said of colonial investment and enterprise today is the truth,” says the author of this survey, Miss Ida Greaves, of the Department of Economies and Sociology in the lowa State College, “Colonies are a readier outlet for money than for anything else.” Not much more than half a century ago, this view, or something very like it, was held almost throughout Europe. Colonies were regarded as luxuries, to be paid for; and in Germany, especially, the reluctance thus to incur distant liabilities was most pronounced, Frederick the Great, as he himself insisted, regarded a village on the frontier as more desirable than a principality two hundred and fifty miles away; and Bismarck shared this same prejudice. For Germany to acquire colonies, said the Iron Chancellor as recently as in 1871, “would be like a poverty-stricken Polish nobleman providing himself with silks and sables when he needed shirts.” When, not long afterwards, Germany joined with avidity in the partition of Africa, and rapidly established claims to colonial possessions in other parts of the world, Bismarck was willing to pay the price; but he did not delude himself with expectations of economic and other gains, which, in fact,

were never forthcoming. It. hasj been calculated that, in the per-j iod 1904-13, Germany sent to her| colonies an average of only thirty | emigrants a year. However this may be, the net result of her colonising activities, which extended over more than a quarter of a century, was the settlement, in \ the Avhole of her Colonial Empire, j of only twenty thousand Germans, j including three thousand police, i There were more German settlers, j in 1914, in the city of Paris. Andj what is true of Germany is no less j true of Italy. At the time of the | Great War, there were about j eight thousand Italians in the j Italian colonies in Africa, and fifty times as many, for example, in the State of New York alone. These arc significant phenomena; and it is particularly instructive to remember, just now', that they are directly attributable to economic causes. “Not a single commodity from the widespread areas of imperial exploitation,’’ says Miss Greaves, “has fulfilled the promise of its profitable beginnings. . . . The one characteristic all regions have in common, is a pressing anxiety to sell, their products.” To what extent dependent colonies, or, indeed, colonies in general, are a charge upon the national funds of the State which is supposed to “exploit” them, is not easily demonstrated, says Miss Greaves; but the financial burden is often obvious enough. The French colonies draw regularly upon the home Treasury; and their direct cost to France was set down, in 1934, at nearly eight hundred million francs. Ihe Netherlands Government pays an annual subsidy to the Budget of the Dutch East Indies; and two years ago, this sum exceeded a million florins. The cost to Britain of her Imperial responsibilities is best indicated by the comparative method employed by Miss Greaves in a discussion of America’s position. “This country,” she says, “is conspicuously lacking in the tropical products which have been the chief goal of overseas expansion. . . The

United States buys all these products in the open market, that is, wherever the cost of' production is lowest. These sources are also open to Great Britain; but, by a scheme of Imperial preference rates, she pays prices 25 per cent, to 100 per cent, higher in order to .obtain similar products from areas inside her own Empire. Prance does likewise, with a few variations in method.” There is, of course, the related question of those, colonial investments which are increased and safeguarded in proportion to the wealth assured to the colonies themselves by subventions from the ruling Power, whatever form these subventions take; but the right to invest is subject to no monopoly, as is evident, for example, from the dispersal of American capital under a wide variety of flags; and Miss Greaves reaches the conclusion that “if countries like Italy and Germany have made little overseas investment, this is because they have little capital available for external use.” Miss Greaves’s conclusions are distinctly interesting, and they cannot but be taken seriously into consideration when the question of colonies and their value to those countries which would wish to have them are under discussion. The question may well be asked: If the products of colonies are made available on equal terms to every nation, does it really matter to whom they ostensibly belong? Lord Blibank, however, takes a sensible Anew when he declares that none of the colonies, the return of which Germany demands, is worth another European Avar.