QUESTION OF TARIFFS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3995, 7 October 1930, Page 49

QUESTION OF TARIFFS.

THE SOUTH AFRICAN VIEW. LONDON, October 1.

General Hertzog said: “ I am fully conscious that the very important functions of the conference will finally adjust the outstanding constitutional questions arising from the 1926 decision, which must be formally sanctioned and considered in detail.”

Referring to the economic policy. General Hertzog added that South Africa viewed with concern Britain’s prospec tive abolition of the existing tariff benefits. Britain’s position as a great commonwealth market for dominion products must necessarily, in the event of her de ciding to change the existing policy, be detrimental to the dominions’ interests and would influence their policy. It was therefore clear that the dominions’ en tual course must mainly depend upon the manner and extent to which their inter ests would be affected by Britain’s policy “ I hope that in no case will the con ference despair of arriving at a solution which will prevent the evil effects of a change of policy assuming the character of a disaster to those who, believing in the stability of intercommonwealth economic relations, have been induced in good faith to make investments on the basis of that belief. I can conceive nothing more destructive of commonwealth co-operation than such a failure, with the consequential loss of faith in the stability of our economic relations.”