THE COST OF ANGLOPHOBIA. Germany May Find It Rather Expensive.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 80, 11 January 1902, Page 8

THE COST OF ANGLOPHOBIA. Germany May Find It Rather Expensive.

SEVERAL sequels to the cheap German sneers levelled at Britain and her colonies are forming interesting reading matter to the people sneered at. just at present The calumniators, previous to their "broken reed" prophecy, were in the throes of an industrial crisis, and the Anglophobia-stricken Teutons are not averting the crisis by their rancour m spreading vxle reports about our conduct of campaigns. Piecing the threads together, one sees the evidence of a growing British intention to live without Germany and its manufactures If it persists, the effect will be to inflict a severe and well-deserv-ed rebuke on the Fatherland, and to lay the foundation of an Imperial zollverem that will make British and Greater British commerce sounder and more expansive than ever • • • The action of a small community like Oamaru, where a large number of people, by signing a pledge, bind themselves not to purchase German goods, is merely one of those straws which show how the wind blows. When the intention to boycott German goods spreads, the German Anglophobes. who employ millions of hands in catering for British necessities, will possibly be sorry they spoke Germany, on account of its geographical position, is commercially at the mercy of outsiders. Outsiders can hasten a decay of German trade that would be a far greater punishment to Anglophobes, and hurt them more deeply, than their absurd pin-pricks can hurt us. England and her colonies are in a position to treat German sneers with contempt. ■» • • Fiom every corner of the world Britain's red patches can exchange products that make it entirely unnecessary to patronise either enemy or friend outside the King's dominions Canada's adoption of a tariff giving a preference to British manufactures is further evidence, if any is required, of the intention of the British people to supply their own needs m a larger measure than heretofore Australia has something to say too on the question of Imperial trade, and the stand that should be taken is to draw closer in trade as in loyal aspirations to the heart of the great Empire of winch it is a part * * * Australia sees m the action of the Oceanic Company a desire to obtain trade command of the Pacific, and her people rightly judge that now is the time in which they should play a strong hand, and decline to allow a hustling, if friendly, nation the right to run them commercially The much - debated paying of subsidies to American ships to carry what they would be very well paid to carry without subsidy, is another reason why Britishers should unite to more largely supply their own needs and carry their own mails m British bottoms The sum of the whole matter is that it will pay the Empire best, in the long run, to place its custom amongst its own people.