EMPIRE IDEALS AND FACTS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17239, 21 April 1930, Page 9

EMPIRE IDEALS AND FACTS

CHAMBERLAIN’S VIEWS free trade not yet possible LONDON, Feb. 22. Sit' Austen Chamoeriain, addressing a conference of women Unionists at bitniingilmm yesterday, moved tho following resolution, winch was enthusiastically adopted :

"'this conference of Birmingham women desires to assure Air. Baldwin of their loyal support of his leadership, and to express their hearty approval of the policy which Jie lias laid before the country.’

Sir Austen paid tribute to Mr. Baldwin’s leadership, and referred to the now Empiro movement.

‘■There always have been some in our party,” said Sir Austen, ‘‘who hung Lack. There always have been some who would pvess forward farther than the majority were prepared to go. We have room for all of them within our ranks. Wo desire no expulsion and no proscription.

‘‘But when two great newspaper proprietors—one of them pursuing a personal vendetta against our leader, and the other -advocating, in pursuance of a cause in which ho is genuinely interested, the creation of a new, and, therefore, hostile party —united in that and nothing else—it is time that we of our party spoke out clearly what we feel about our leaders, what is the policy we are going to advocate, and how we stand in relation to this new movement.

j ‘‘l have known Mr. Baldwin ever I since he entered the House of Com- ■ mons. I have served with him in many ; capacities alike as a leader and as a follower. 1 feel that <1 may pay a tribute to his loyalty, his honesty and his courago throughout his political life, and the sagacity of the counsels which he has given to his party. ; “But Tdo not base my resolution on personal grounds. When Lord Beaverbrook started his movement, I viewed it with sympathy, and if I could have persuaded myself that it was a practical policy at this time, or that to advocate it now would advance the cause of Imperial unity, I‘ should not have hesitated to do so. “NOT YET READY-” “Free trade within the Empire is a great ideal, to which perhaps this Empire may some day approach, but for which no part of it is at present ready. “Whilst there is room between the Dominions and us for more extension of trade, and a far better, organisation and distribution of trade, there is no possibility until not merely the minds of our "people at Home, but the minds of our people in the Dominions, have completely changed, of breaking down the tariff boundaries within the Empire.

“It is, therefore, an ideal which we may keep before us. Wo may measure proposals which are submitted to us by the basis of whether in the long run thev will help forward this ideal, or will-hinder it. But it is not an ideal which is within the power of any in this party to achieve in this country at the present time,, if ever it is to he achieved at all.

“To break away from' the old party, and to try and * establish a new one on a plan like this is not only to hold out a programme which has to lie explained away and whittled down the moment you attempt to enter into any detail, hut it is to injure, and, if it were successful, to break ’the only instrument through which progress will be made.”