The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND MONDAY. SEPTEMBER, 16, 1929 HELPING FOREIGNERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 769, 16 September 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND MONDAY. SEPTEMBER, 16, 1929 HELPING FOREIGNERS

/"'RE AT BRITAIN is extraordinarily generous to foreign ” workers. It almost continuously maintains a million of its own unemployed on the ragged edge of poverty, and spends, apart from the great expenditure on poorhouse charity, £50,000,000 out of State and industrial contributions to the Unemployment Insurance Fund for the temporary relief of idle men and women. While doing all that without providing any remedy at all for the evil of chronic unemployment, the kindhearted nation imports foreign manufactured goods to the value approximately of £300,000,000, thereby, in effect, providing steady employment for over one million foreigners. These facts are taken from an official report of Parliamentary Debates on the question of safeguarding British industries—an informative, hut also a lamentable report published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office. With impeccable British fairness both sides of the argument have been given in clear light, so that ordinary people, rather than extraordinary politicians, may study the problem for themselves and decide, through the ballot-box, whether Great Britain should cling to the idealism of Free Trade or follow the ruthless practice of all other nations, including the British Dominions, in raising tall tariff for the protection of their industrialists. Many economists and shrewd business peers, like Dord Melchett, .who is now chairman of the Council of the Empire Producers’ Association, assert that, since Free Trade created a great Empire in prosperity, Free Trade within the Empire would raise many of the nations within the British Commonwealth out of their slough of depression and industrial difficulties. The noble lord, for example, regards Empire Free Trade as a guiding ideal, and adds that it is a genius of Britain’s to obtain the best practical results from an ideal without sacrificing legitimate local needs and aspirations. Unfortunately, not unlike most other idealists, Lord Melchett does not reveal the methods by which British genius could transform idealism into prosperous practice. He insists upon the necessity of creating throughout Great Britain faith in the Empire as a virtue of vital importance to unity in peace and in war. It may he surprising to some to learn that such faith is slack in Britain, hut he could have added that, in some of her Dominions, there is a similar lack of faith in Great Britain. Of course, there is no dearth of beautiful sentiment and rainbow patriotism, but when it comes to business and material benefits, all the Dominions, like Great Britain, dearly love the fojreign manufacturer. Take the case of Canada, where affection for Britain is equal to Sir Austen Chamberlain’s love of France. The oldest Dominion, during the past financial year, purchased American goods to the value of £178,000,000. Her imports from Great Britain totalled £34,000,000, or about one-fifth. India is now Britain’s best customer, but her purchases per capita only amounted to six shillings as compared with Australia’s £9 a head. As Mr. Philip Snowden has said, let Australia increase her imports of British merchandise by India’s six shillings a head, and Britain’s gain would he £2,000,000 a year. But if India’s purchasing power could be doubled the benefit to Great Britain would be £83,000,000 a year. There is the scope for development of Empire trade; but how long will it take to teach the peasants of India to use steel ploughs and motor tractors instead of wooden ploughs and oxen ? It has to be noted that the British delegates at the Assembly of the League of Nations have proposed a two-years’ international holiday. The proposal has not much chance of acceptance. Within the past ten years, 7,000 miles of new tariff frontiers have been brought into existence, and instead of giving commercial treaties a life of ten years Protectionist nations have given such instruments a minimum duration of only one year. It is a delightful thing to see the representatives of many nations meet in a spirit of brotherhood at Geneva, and talk of disarmament and the rosy dawn of world peace, but when they return home they add another 30 per cent, to their tariff duties against Great Britain and love it for its Free Trade simplicity_and generosity. Thus, in the meantime, the British Empire leads the world in helping foreigners. s. * THE “OFF-SIDE” RULE MANY motorists have only a hazy knowledge of what is meant by the “off-side” rule, which gives precedence on the road to traffic coming or crossing from the right. The importance of the rule is to be seen in its bearing on civil actions, but the judgment of Mr. Justice Smith at Palmerston North hardly serves to clarify the matter. The particular action centred round a collision at the intersection of a main highway with a country road. The plaintiff, whose action succeeded, was a passenger in a car approaching along the country road from the right. The defendant, travelling at a fast pace on the main road, failed to observe the off-side rule and a collision was the result. Thus, superficially, the issues were simple. But though a breach of the off-side rule had been committed, his Honour appears to have virtually excluded this from application to the case, and the plaintiff was awarded damages rather because defendant happened to be travelling at a high speed. The remarks of the judge concerning the application of the off-side rule to country traffic will interest all motorists. In the case before him, his Honour held that the existence of the off-side rule did not permit a driver on a side road to approach the intersection without a reduction of speed. Prudent motorists will endorse this contention : but the added remark that a driver on a side road has no right to assume that the main road driver will observe the rule seems to defeat the object of the regulations. His Honour made the stipulation that the right to such an assumption could only be conceded when the rule was more emphatically established by custom on country roads. But if observance of the rule is to become at all general in the country, that will only occur when the strictures of the courts are applied to all who have been guilty of a breach of it. In city traffic the rule giving the right of way to traffic from the right is fairly generally observed even though motorists may be unfamiliar the existence of a definite regulation governing the procedure. Common prudence, of course, demands that even where the rule is in his favour, a motorist shall slow up when approaching an intersection. But the point is that if city motorists, through long custom, learn to place implicit faith in this important rule of the road, surely they can expect to find corresponding attention paid to it in the country. The rule is acknowledged to have national application, and to supersede local traffic regulations. Consequently it should apply without differentiation in both country and town.