NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13691, 6 March 1908, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

MR. LLOYD GEORGE AND THE COLONIES.

" Mb. Lloyd George is bent on proving to us how far we have travelled from the paths of the old Cobdenism, and how certain is the final overthrow of doctrines which- are the negation of Imperialism," says the Saturday Review. " Cobdon welcomed ' the indirect process of ff%e trade' as the most effectual means of ' gradually and imperceptibly loosening the bonds which unite our colonies to us by a mistaken notion of self-interest,' and the two latest Blue Books to reach us from Mr. Lloyd George's department prove how unquestionably right Cobden was. Like other civilised nations, the colonies refuse [ to take their economics from us, and instead of girding at them in the lofty tone ; of a philosopher, as was the manner of Mr. i Asquith at the Imperial Conference, Mr. ■ Lloyd George has the good sense to ac- , cept facts and make the best of them. Realising with colonial statesmen the natu- , ral disintegrating effects of Cebdenisin, Mr. Lloyd George abandons the British attitude of laissez-faire, and sets himself to co-operate with them in doing what no bona-fide Cobdenite ought to do—namely, stimulate - British trade with the colonies rather than with foreign countries, believing, as no Cobdenite ought to believe, that 'the Empire will be a great gainer thereby.' He sends Mr. Jeffray as Special Trade Commissioner to New Zealand, and Mr. Richard Grigg to Canada, and out of the mouths of both these official witnesses we now get a justification of the warnings with which Mr. Chamberlain startled the world four years ago, and a justification also of the policy of interimperial co-operation by which the Empire may be knit more closely together. The progressive nature of the disintegration under free trade is clearly indicated in these Board of Trade reports and in the searching and not less impartial investigations of the Tariff Commission by which they seem to have been largely inspired, and without which no clear understanding of the Empire trade problem is possible. We are shown how as the colonies make progress in national and industrial status their foreign trade associations tend to increase at the expense of the United Kingdom. ' We may stand still, if we like, and declare proudly that ' not a single pennyworth of preference shall be granted on a single pppercorn,' but meanwhile great economic forces are at work, and, as Dr. Jameson said at the Conference, ' when once you begin to make treaties outside the Empire there is no saying how far they may go. When you once get commercial treaties and commercial sympathy, you generally find political sympathy follows.' If we do not want this, we cannot too soon fling wide the door which our Ministers so boastfully 'slammed' six- months ago." THE LONDON TIMES. In expressing its regret at the proposed changes in the London Times proprietary, the Manchester Guardian, one of the most dignified and able papers in the country, pays a high tribute to the characteristics of the Times as the representative English newspaper, and it is well to have them on record. "It has had a certain individual character, a character common to a great number of Englishmen who count for a great deal in England's affairs, and it has apparently made /it its ambition to strengthen and encourage that type of Englishman, to make his views count for as much as possible in the country, and to represent him to the outside world as the main ingredient of the British race. The type is a common one in puolic affairs, in business, and in some of the professions. It is found at its purest in the efficient, steadily eager middle-class man pushing successfully upwards. Some of it 3 characteristics are a high vitality, weakness of imagination, a, real belief in the importance of evidence, a strong regard for public decency, an instinctive respect for j strength and external success in others, and a robust impatience with weak, struggling causes, ideas not yet received in powerful quarters, and talents not yet i certificated by public favour. No English journal has, as a rule, shown a greater J wish to bring out all the relevant evidence on political questions, and none has discussed them with more passionate prejudice. On the critical side the average opinion of thoroughly well-educated people on works cf literature and the arts ie nowhere expressed with more competence and sincerity, and yet we wonder has any journal with so much power and knowledge at its command done so little to help genius to its first recognition? On such social questions as that of criminal discipline or that of industrial combination it has usually taken the hard, narrow, backward views that prevail among holders of first-class contract tickets to Cannonstreet station, but it has been •beyond praise in the rigour with which it has kept, its columns clean of sensationalism and dirt, the catchpenny interview and the lying report. One may hate the type which the Times represents— its metallic efficiency, Us materialism, its insensibility to considerations of national chivalry, it« want of interest in marketable forms of human power, its contemptuous dislike of organised workmen ; but still one has always fell for the Times the respect due to a strong, coherent character, which no 'yellow' newspaper ever is. It has been a moral reality, not a mere disconnected succession of shouts througn a megaphone. Where you disliked it most, you still felt that what yoi' disliked and what you respected in it held together; or, perhaps, your grounds for respect qualified your sense of dislike; remembering that it had yielded nothing in its reports of news to the public appetite for vulgarity and triviality, you felt that the perversity, as it seemed to you, was at any rate a very honest one, and that it had its roots in a, mixed, authentic character in which that kind of propriety was looted too.''