Nelson Evening Mail. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1912 GERMANY & FREETRADE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVII, Issue XLVII, 6 March 1912, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1912 GERMANY & FREETRADE.

THE HIGH PROTECTIONIST POLICY CONDEMNED. WHILST Germany is essentially a protectionist country, it is evident that freetrade sentiment is by no means nonexistent, Mr R. S. Long, who is. often regarded as the "Fortnightly Review's" special correspondent in Berlin,, so regularly does lie write for the. magazine from that capital, has an informative article the January issue, on the prospects of the Reichstag elections, which were then impending. In the course of a remarkably accurate forecast of the elections, he remarks that though protection versus freetrade was only the second issue—the .first being the new taxation introduced by the Government in 1909 under the name of financial reform—still it was an important issue, because the new Reichstag would have to decide" whether the .next commercial treaties - were to be made on the basis of the present high tariff or not. .He adds that the attack upon protection has been strong, and apparently unwelcome to a Government faced with the more dangerous attack Upon the financial refoitn. Against the- agrarian-protection-ist Conservative section, which is fiscally associated with the Centre or Catholic section, and the National Liberals representing industrialism, , must, be ranged the Radical Party, in which are absorbed three older Liberal sections, and also the Social Democrats.

Mr Long says of »the Radical Party that it points to England as the ideal in economics; but on the subject of German protection adopts an opportunist attitude. Protection, it holds, is an evil which hampers trade, injures the consumer, and fosters only an unhealthy industry. But in view of the fact that Gorman industry and agriculture have grown up on the basis of protectionist prices, the sudden abolition of tariffs would be a dangerous experiment, and the most that can be demanded is "tho gradual reduction of import duties," followed by commercial treaties of a liberal kind. With gradually lowered duties the affected interests would have time to adapt themselves to conditions which approximate to freetrade. v - The contributor remarks pertinently that "the Radicals here, as elsewhere, show sounder instincts for practical politics than, the Social-Democrats, who require freetrade without delay or qualification, and -sandwich their demands in with the abolition of all indirect taxation and other remote Utopias, thereby, rather injuring than advocating freetrade." The opinion is expressed that the real strength of anti-protectipnjst parties. in the JRejphstag .lies.,iri behind them, by which. they fall not far behind the protectionists. .

He thinks that "a transfer of a million votes,-which is .by no means, impossible, would equalise the . protectionist and freetrade interests."- Mi: Long goes on to say that during the -last two years the strength of freetrade propaganda has been shown in the vigor of the anti-protectionist press, and by resolutions against protection or against some of its more obnoxious features, passed by Chambers of Commerce, by industrial-commercial associations, and by municipalities. Freetraders, he says, have exploited the extraordinary height. German food prices, the food tax disorders in Austria, the complaints from America and France, the low cost of Freetrade States, the evil way of the Imperial finances, the flourishing finance —despite great war debts—of Great Britain, and the apparent ease with which British financiers raise vast sums of taxes, while in Germany in 1909 \ the levying of £55,000,000 caused a political convulsion. Moreover, this, authority declares that genuine discontent has been caused by certain "chicane" aspects of the German system, the forbidding of cattle import under the pretence i>f excluding disease, the import certificate system, under which the nation pays heavy bounties to commercial exporters at a time when the Treasury has not enough money nWI the State has nut enoiighf corn, ami, .finally, the manipulation of State railway - rates, in the interest of corn growers and great exporters. Mr Long admits that the existing system in Germany is not immediately threatened—but "it would be a great mistake to regard the freetrade versus protection issuesias -a dead one." He concludes by saying that "if it plays

only a secondary pjirt in the coming election, the time is not far off when, unless German economic conditions radically change, it will play the main, or even the only, part." Here is a sufficient answer to those who regard protection as necessarily a "settled policy" of any country that adheres to it at present. It will be remembered that we have already dealt with the outcry against it in the United States, which is much the same as in Germany.