WHAT WILL GERMANY DO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12452, 23 December 1903, Page 4

WHAT WILL GERMANY DO.

A Berlin journal, whose utterances are considered of. sufficient imoortnnce to take their place in our cable messages of this morning, asks what Germany proposes to do if the other British colonies imitate New Zealand's example and she .is excluded from the. world's markets. The German point of view in matters of British trade appears akin to the Kaiser's impression of the battle of Waterloo. We appear to them to exist, as Wellington survived, by Prussian permission and assistance". The remarkable attitude of the United Kingdom, which for sixty years has admitted free of duty goods from countries which raised fiscal barriers against hei return trade, and the equally remarkable attitude of the British colonics, who hav( treated foreigners, fiscally, as the have treated their own British kif dred, have apparently combined o persuade the Germans that thy have vested rights in our Empie, and that we cannot even iinitte their very excellent • fiscal exanple unless it suits them to allow us. The situation is hardly creditable to the commercial education in which we understood Germany to excel. Nobody proposes to exclude her rom " the world's markets." She is still free to enjoy her preserved marcets of Germar New Guinea and Gernan. West Africa, to make such spffiial arrangements as she has been ihthe habit of making with Austria and Russia to secure prefeiential teatment for hex goods as against Iritish, and to trade on an equality vith" China or Persia or any other ouhtry which allows her " most favoired nation" treatment. . What she is not to be free to do is to enter British, markets on an equality with British producers, for they are going toVdo as she has long done, keep their own markets as far as possible to themselves. The excitement of Germany at this probability is a remarkable indication of how she has been profiting by our national supineness, But her merchants and .', manufacturers must learn that, though' they may individually suffer by our British tariff changes, as our merchants and manufacturers have suffered by German tariffs,' it is not in any way an international question, since we areis it necessary to say clearly and wholly within our ' national rights. - J ;