POST-WAR TRADE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume IV, Issue 944, 19 February 1917, Page 8

POST-WAR TRADE.

IMPERIAL PREFERENCE. DISASTROUS FOR GERMANY. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. LONDON, February 17. The German socialist newspaper "Vorwaerts," commenting on the announcement of Lord Balfour's Committee on After-War Trade Policy, proposing a system of preferential tariffs within ihe British Empire, says:—"This docs not mean the immediate death of free trade, but it means that a procession is forming which will accompany Free 'trade to the grave. It means that Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand, which have been melted in the flaming fire of the world-war into closer unity with the Mother Country, will exchange the former loose political connection for absolute union. The only consolation is that thousands of obstacles are being piled in the path which the Empirebuilders, Mr Lloyd George and Lord Balfour, hope to follow. Preferential duties within the British Dominions will hit Germany's export trade, as it is intended to do." The "Vorwaerts" concludes: "The British world-empire was one of Our b'' c * eiiKfnnmrs."