THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1932. AFTER MANY YEARS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21118, 27 February 1932, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1932. AFTER MANY YEARS.

Amid cheers and followed by an ovation to Mr. Neville Chamberlain, tlie Import Duties Bill has ytassed through its final stage in the House of Commons. On Monday it is to receive the Royal Assent, and that evening it will come into operation. Mr. Chamberlain has said that the future historian will note the. passage of the measure as the beginning of a new career by Britain, hand in hand with her own possessions and sister countries within the Empire, as the central figure of a great economic federation, wide and strong enough to withstand any checks to her fortunes. if this be deemed hyperbole, it can be easily excused. It is not mere rhetoric. A new era has definitely dawned. What it holds for the various units of the economic federation thus formed, nobody can authoritatively sa3'.• Much depends on (he part to be played by the several Dominions' as they use the opportunity given by this legislation. But in its passing is something epochal. A longestablished order has gone, so far as Britain is concerned, and the way is open as never before for an Imperial union of economic endeavour. To the invitation of that future the mind inevitably turns from these days of difficulty. A vista of hope is glimpsed. Yet thought as inevitably reverts to the days of another Chamberlain, Mr. Neville's father, whose dream of an economic federation is promising to come true after many years. In the ovation paid to the Chancellor of the Exchequer of these days must have been a contributing fervour lent by memory of the baffled but valiant purpose of the Colonial Secretary of a generation ago. The offices are different; the plan is not quite the same: but the same sound principle is honoured by the propounder of (his new policy, and his triumph atones for the defeat his father suffered. Back of both economic schemes, that of the former Chamberlain and this of the present, is the selfsame belief in the political union, on a basis of freedom and mutual service, of the far-spread territories of the British Empire. Even in his day the oversea kinsmen of the British family were girding at the political system that regarded them as small minorities subordinated "to the will and command of those who stay at home." The earlier clamour at the domination of the Colonial Office—this country, as its Godley showed, could supply instances—had changed to a reasoned plea for freedom to co-operate. But it, too, was before its time. British statesmen were still, as a rule, thinking in terms of a world that revolved on a political point somewhere in Westminster. Joseph Chamberlain broke through the traditional pose. "When I speak of our colonies," he said in his memorable speech at Glasgow in 1003, putting a deep stress on the possessive pronoun in the phrase, "it is an expression ; they are not ours—they are not ours in a possessory sense. They are sister States, able to treat with us from an equal position, able to hold to us, willing to hold to us, but also able to break with us." Many heard aghast. It seemed a wild complaint, almost a knell. But he viewed things differently ; in what he asked by inferj ence for the Motherland to give up he saw an investment that would return a, hundredfold of loyalty and aid to her. lie was too eager to make parliamentary federation an essential element in (he scheme. "If we had a commercfal union throughout the Empire," he said, "of course there would have to be a council of the Empire. . . . Such a council would at first deal only with commercial arrangements, but gradually it would bring all important Imperial matters into its grasp." He was probably induced to suggest this line of development because the Imperial Federation League had recently failed to arouse any widespread enthusiasm for its cause, and thought of a "customs union" as an approach, along a line of less resistance, to the same ultimate objective. But he was equally doomed to fail in this alternative attempt at welding an Empire by political means, and would have been better advised to deal only with fiscal reciprocity. However, in the years that followed the political aspect of the Imperial problem got very different handling; partly by the vision of statesmen and still more by the resistless logic of events, in which war was to exercise a crucial impulse, the problem was solved by lengthening and lightening the political bonds, not by making them of shorter and stouter fashion. In due time, an Imperial Conference added lo itself art economic section, inverting the first Chamberlain's order, and the second makes his commercial gesture fo oversea kinsmen in possession of political freedom.

So the Import Duties Bill literally introduces a new era, albeit it grows out of the earlier attempt to achieve a union motived by the same ideal of "sister States." In (he interval there has been a recrudescence of the principle of a super-State's domination of distant minorities. Liberal and Labour Governments have conservatively clung to the notion that the Homeland should dictate, as far as possible, the fiscal doings of the Dominions; at least

they have refused overtures of preferential treatment. It has remained for a Government inspired and guided by Conservatives —so much for the appropriateness of labels! —to launch afresh the idea of free reciprocity and to, freight it with practical offers having high value. In the interval, the Homeland has remembered and learned much and is ready to give the Imperial ideal a real chance; and with that backing, no longer dangerously ready to make a cheap Empire for the sake of a cheap loaf but erfger to share a project for a worldwide nationhood united in mutual service, (he.younger Chamberlain has been privileged to succeed. The ideal needs much more to bring it to full reality. All eyes turn now from London to Ottawa, waiting to see how the Dominions will respond. They have had their own time of waiting, but it can now be forgotten. Not a voice was raised in the Commons the other day for an amendment placing I hem in the category of foreign countries : the voices lifted to cheer the passage of the Import Duties Bill utter a call to do their part. They must not fail.