THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, APRIL 8, 1907. NAVIGATION CONFERENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13456, 8 April 1907, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, APRIL 8, 1907. NAVIGATION CONFERENCE.

The conference now sitting in London to consider the navigation laws of the Empire with a view to establishing a common policy is likely to prove in some respects hardly less important than the more general conference of Premiers on which attention has been so generally fixed for some months. The extent ot the questions that may occupy the Colonial Conference and the manifest difficulty of bringing about an agreement on some of them may very well justify the fears felt by many that but little will come of its deliberations. 1» this the minor conference on navigation policy certainly should have the advantage ; its purposes are more clearly defined; its limits are more easily reached ; and the causes of difference of opinion are fewer and more easily dealt with. Yet it is evident that the difficulty which attends the formation of any policy applicable to all parts of a worldwide Empire has already made itself felt. As was only natural, it has from the first become evident that the point of view of the English shipowners differs materially from that of the colonial representatives at the Conference. For the best part of a century the owners of British ships have more and more become in reality the world's great carriers, and the fact has made them feel less national and more entirely businesslike in their way of regarding and dealing with all the problems which the trade presented. The question how to make the most of the opportunities for acquiring wealth is the one which has been most present to their minds, and other questions of less individual but more national interest have naturally sunk into the background. Fifty or sixty years ago British ships were manned almost entirely by British sailors, and formed a great reserve depot for naval material in case of a Avar. Gradually the need of a greater supply of men, and the increasing difficulty of securing Englishmen, on terms which had proved sufficiently attractive in the, past, has made British shipowners care less and less about the nationality of their seamen, and more and more for the question of how small a wage will attract foreigners into their service. It was evident, of course, that if the mercantile navy of England "was to fill the position of the world's carriers it must have a sufficient supply of seamen to carry on the work ; and now that other nations have begun to enter into a real competition with England it has become equally evident to the owners of British shipping that they must get seamen to man their vessels in all respects as cheaply as shipowners of other nationalities are able to do. The consequence of the new policy has been the rapid increase of a-foreign element amongst our supposed British sailors, on terms as to both wages and treatment which are no longer attractive to the youth of our own people. To some extent, no doubt, the policy lias been successful. It has enabled English shipping to maintain the position of the world's carriers ; it has enabled shipowners and companies to increase their already enormous investments of capital, and yet to secure good interest on the money ; but it has not made the old provision for the rainy day, when a great naval war may make vast demands on the sup ply of really British seamen to man British warships, and it lias not ! really continued in any true sense j the policy so long embodied in the i old motto. " Britannia rules the ! waves." The English shipping re- I gisters. indeed, are fuller than ever; j the British Hag waves over more vessels than ever before., but the \ ships and their crews are no longer i fully British in the sense in which j they were so fifty years ago. j

What has so far taken place at the Conference is exactly what might have been looked for under the circumstances. The representatives of British shipping take one view of nearly every question that arises and the representatives of the colonies— at least of this part of the worldtake one entirely different, if not indeed entirely opposite. It is not in j all respects a very gratifying discovery that the larger and broader, as well as the more humanitarian, j view of the questions raised, is taken by the colonial representatives and is opposed by the English shipping | interests. The question of immediate profit or loss, the shadow of the next balance-sheet and next annual: meeting of shareholders, seem to ' hang heavily over the British repre- - sentatives at the Conference ; so ' heavily, indeed, as to leave little room for thoughts of the future, outside the region of the counting-house and ledger. [( is only fair to re _ j member, however, that the British and colonial representatives at the I Conference are not really representative of the same interests. The j men the colonies have sent to repre- • sent them are generally public men. : with the responsibility of power and . the breadth of view which that posi- ! tion generally gives. The British J

shipowner is thinking, and naturally thinking, of little besides the expansion of trade and the securing of profits *, the colonial representative is looking on the question as one of national and Imperial policy. What our own and Australia's representatives demand is something wider than a mere question of book-keep-ing. It is a policy which shall secure well-being for the worker on the sea, somewhat in proportion to the new ideas of well-being for the worker on shore, and so shall make a sailor's life attractive to our own workers. The answer of the shipowners is that it will not pay to give it; and it is here that the difficulty of an agreement arises. To the man of the ledger and the half-yearly dividend this is in fact the main, if not the only, consideration ; to the men who are thinking of the future of our people, both by sea and land, it is very far from being the only consideration.' To them, and to us, a so-called British marine which is worked in an ever increasing degree by foreigners, is not really a British marine at all, oecause it offers no career for our own people and no nursery for our own navy. When the day comes, should it ever come, that the mercantile navy of Britain is worked only by the use of foreign seamen, the veal interest of Englishmen, or at least of the men of Greater Britain, in it will have ceased. And yet, of course, the element of commercial success cannot be left out of the question, for the simple reason that when it ceases to pay dividends it will soon cease to exist. And it is here that the larger Imperial view of the question should come in. It may be true that, with better conditions for British sailors there would arise the question of German or other foreign ships taking their place and attracting their trade ; but so far at least as the Empire itself is concerned this could easily be prevented. Colonial preference is a doctrine which is not the selfish thing that some ignorant or prejudiced critics suppose. Its object is indeed the consolidation of the Empire, but it is also the advantage, and well-being of its people. If this can only be attained by shutting out from our trade cheap foreign shipping and cheap foreign seamen, it will in the long run prove to England's advantage, as well as—possibly even more than — to that of her great colonies and the rest of the Empire.