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Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 593, 4 January 1916, Page 6

! Plans have been completed for the holding of an Empire Trade Conference in London in June next. The j provisional programme contains some far-reaching proposals on ; which, it is essential, an understanding should be arrived at before the j conclusion of the war. The great question is, of course, the closing of as many of the oversea markets as I possible to German trade. A wave of revulsion, the result of the miliitary misconduct of the Teutons, has 'swept through the Empire. There is I a feeling in the Dominion that j henceforward the German is a man jto be regarded with suspicion, and j German goods things not to be handled by Britishers. The commercial war with the enemy will be just as rigorously prosecuted in time to come as is the war of blood and j steel, and we must be prepared for a desperate effort on the part of Ger,man merchants to recover the iground lost to them by the activities | of the British Fleet. There never j was such an opportunity ottered to | British trade, and the commercial j entente suggested by "Lc Temps" iwill be necessary before the guns go ■ home if Germany is to be punished I as thoroughly as she deserves. There lis the grand ideal, but so far it has I only been talked about—nothing definite has been done in Australasia jto realise that ideal. Perhaps the I conference referred to will evolve a set plan of campaign which will starve, or bar, German trade out of | the oversea markets, and give our J national relations and allies as near ja monopoly as possible. England twill, of necessity, have to readjust | her tariff policy—a change of heart | made possible only by the war. Projective barriers will be needed to keep out enemy goods. A prohibitive (tax on German and Austrian productions will not be sufficient. Japan |at the present lime is being used as | a clearing house for German cheap stuffs, and after the war it might be Chili or the Argentine. All conn-1 tries not included in the preferential! tariffs must be treated alike. Britain, her colonies, and her allies must aim at taking the place of Germany in the world's markets. There is only one way to do this, and it must be done before the war is ended. The announcement of such a commercial entente would shake industrial Germany to its foundations.