The New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1923. THE RIGHT COURSE

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11702, 14 December 1923, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1923. THE RIGHT COURSE

The “Age,” the protectionist newspaper of Melbourne, has taken the wrong course. It is a consistent course taken in the belief that the verdict of the British constituency was due to the rush tactics of the Government. The “Age” explanation is like the judgment of wise old ladies, who, being disappointed about an “eminently suitable” engagement between, two young people of their acquaintance, affirm that things are not at all what they seem. The girl, they declare, was really crazy about the young man, but he tried to rush her affections before she had acknowledged them to herself. Naturally, 6he could only refuse. But that refusal does not imply that love is dead, or even much hurt. In time the young lady will discover what her feelings really are, and then the young man can renew hie suit, certain of success. This is the line the Victorian protectionist journal takes about the election. The electors had not hat! sufficient time to consider a policy running counter to a tradition of long standing. Two weeks, the “Age” declares, are not enough to upset faith in a policy of seventy-five years, carrying a brilliant statistical report. The electors refused to reverse. But their affection for the reversal is still alive, and in a short time it will begin to kick. Then will he the time for another general election, and that will end in the death of free trade, with all that such an event means to the interests of tho overseas Empire. It is a matter of opinion. Those holding with tho view of tho “Age'’ will pin their policy of Imperial co-operation on their hope that protection will soon ho installed at Westminster in the place so long occupied by free trade. We hold their opinion to he quite wrong, but they are quite right to hack their convictions.

The opposite view is that protection

is dead. A sharp statement to that effect was the only thing possible or necessary in the moment of the defeat of protection. A better way of stating the truth is that protection is once j more dead. That would imply that protection, having revived after the | first death, may survive the second. 1 Such a statement avoids prophecy, which says, “Never, never, never”; confines itself merely to the declaration that what has happened may happen again. And history is full of instances of opinion reversals. But this is not to say that a reversal of the economic verdict given last week by the British constituencies is certain. The signs at present are that it is not even likely. We cannot extend our admiration of the “Age’s” consistency to its opinion. Whatever may happen in the remote future, it is, so far as the signs in the political atmosphere tell us, quite unlikely that the verdict of last week will he reversed at all. When other* signs show themselves, it will l>o possible to take another view. But at present the signs are that protection is dead so far as the immediate bearing of that doctrine on the political fortunes of this Dominion is concerned. Death, in the political sense, is only suspended animation. The signs are that the animation of protection, which was suspended last week, remains suspended for ages and ages. As for its chance at any poo sible new election, there is no more than there is for the revival of greatness out of great Caesar’s dust, used for keeping the wind away from overchilled humanity. Of this the moral is that in pursuing our policy of Empire, we of the overseas must be independent of the chances of any possible economic revival in Britain. We must work for our theories of Empire as if the economic door were shut in our faces with a hang, preventing any other noise whatever from being near. The Empire must exist, endure, and progress if free trade rules the British world with rigid sway. As we showed when discussing the verdict of the electors, there are several methods by which we can succeed, quite outside of the scope of tariffs. Britain can give us preferences without raising the cost of food to the workers of Britain.' Mr Massey has apparently taken this view. He is hammering as hard as he can on the subject of the Imperial Conference. Here he is doing the right thing. As a matter of fact, it is a great service, to stand forward and help the Conference work at tho present juncture when the fall of protection 6eems to take with it all the oversea interests only recently bound up ostentatiously with it. Mr Massey is doing his duty in this. By staying in Britain over the election, he is doing what was expected of him. In the moment of defeat of the new idea on which so much of Empire depended, he has stood forward urging that, whatever has happened, the work of the Imperial Conference ought not to be forgotten. He may share to some extent the “Age’s” view that protection is about to .he very much alive presently. But he has not emphasised that view. The main burden of his advice is that we must make the most of the circumstances in which we are placed. Aspirations and prognostications are useless in the great crises of Fate. We are in such a crisis. We cannot follow the example of a protectionist journal—no more protectionist than our own, for that matter—and rely on unfounded hopes for a change of economic heart in Britain. Our true course is to leave Britain to her own economic ideas, and to make the best of them for ourselves. Whatever the fate of the fiscal issue, we must push our interests regardless. Economic theories come and go, hut the Empire goes on for ever.