EMPIRE TRADE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume L, Issue 16424, 7 May 1924, Page 5

EMPIRE TRADE.

THE PREFERENCE PROBLEM. IMPORTANT SPEECHES. (Elec. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association 1 LONDON, May 6. At the Imperial Industries Club dinner, ISir James Allen presiding, Mr F. L. McDougall said that, owing to the unfortunate aftermath of the Economic Conference. Australia would probably have to extend the British paper preference to Canada. Paper, cotton, woollens and dyes well illustrated the deliberate shelter from foreign competition given to the British trade by Australian preferences. Would Britain realise that the orderly policy of the Empire development might be the only safeguard in an era of intensified industrial competition, which the restoration of Europe must involve? It was essential if Empire development was to be safe in the hands of British democracy it should ho made clear that Imperial policy was never imperious, that the ideals of the empires of .Spain or Portugal with their prohibition of trade to all foreigners could never he revived, and that we did not intend following the hundred per cent, discrimination against foreigners, which America and Japan now employed in their dependencies. Our ideal must he an Empire as self-dependent as possible..

Concerning the essential foodstuffs and raw materials Mr McDougall pleaded for a commonwealth within which British trade would reasonably be preferred, but in which foreign competition was not excluded. But it was most important that tho Empire should be a union of free peoples. With this ideal of Empire development we must win the affections of the British democracy, and British Labor.

Sir J. Cook said that Australia and New Zealand took up the position that they begged' for nothing, but were conscious it was not in the interests of the Empire that they should have to betake themselves to the course that now remained open to them. They felt that if the Empire was good enough to fight, for it was good enough to trade with, and they declined to apply strict mathematical economic consideration to the development of tho Empire’s future, rather they would fall back upon the King's statement that it was their duty even at some sacrifice to develop the family estate.