THE ALLEGED OFFER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22257, 9 May 1934, Page 6

THE ALLEGED OFFER

It seems to have been a fitting comment that was offered by The Times on Sir Herbert Samuel's speech in the House of Commons on' Monday, that he used the alleged offer by New, Zealand of free trade with, the United Tvingdom as the peg on which to hang a speech on the general fiscal principles that are espoused by him. Sir Herbert Samuel, it is to be observed, did not pretend that New Zealand had made an offer of Freetrade. It has been left to the more disingenuous propagandists so to describe the message from the New Zealand Government to the Dominions Office. One imaginative Lond6n paper has gone so far as to write of a "demand'' from New Zealand. Sir Herbert Samuel used the expression which Mr Ramsay MacDonald had previously used concerning the New Zealand communication when he spoke of it as an inquiry. But Sir Herbert Samuel said it was an inquiry of a kind tr°t no business man would neglect, -t is to be apprehended that he is no better acquainted with the circumstances in New Zealand in which the inquiry was made than he is with the conditions in Western Australia —for he connected the secession movement of years' standing with the recent policy of the British Government in respect of the restriction of trade! There can be no doubt that the New Zealand Government expected the answer which ..it received from the Dominions Office. Its inquiry can only have been made for the purpose of disabusing the minds of some of the producers who, concerned by the prospect of quotas, conceived the idea that Great Britain might be disposed to enter into a separate agreement with New Zealand, without any regard whatever to the other dominions, although the whole spirit of the Ottawa undertakings might be expressed in the assertion that the British Government could not give to one dominion what it.denied to others. The episode of the alleged offer was, in the view of The Times, disproportionately magnified in the discussion in the House of Commons. It has been disproportionately magnified ever since it came out, at the conference in March between the Government and representatives of the dairying interests, that the Government had sought a statement of the British attitude.