EMPIRE TRADE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19277, 2 April 1925, Page 5

EMPIRE TRADE

MORE IMPORTANT THAN FOREIGN DEVELOPMENT ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE • ALIEN COMPETITION CREEPING AHEAD Received April 1, 10.10 p.m. LONDON, April 1. Th** British and Overseas Banks Association. with thirty-five member banks, whose aggregate paid up capital totals over eighty million, held their annual dinner at Hyde Park Hotel, when there was a large attendance, including Sir James Allen anJ the Hon. William Pember Reeves. The Hon. Wm. Ormsby-Gore, Undersecretary for the Colonies, said that we in Britain were more and more realising that however important foreign trade might be. the real solution of many of our problems depended almost entirely on the development of the Empire. In this work, the Dominions and Colonial banks were bound to take an ever-increasing shade and responsibility. The problem of our generation was one of not merely increasing the total value of production throughout the Empire, but also of how to apply the savings and credit of the more developed portions of the Empire to the development of the less developed portions. The problem of Australian development was not merely one of migration. It was also a problem of finance. Happily, the signs were most encouraging in the Dominions and the protectorates generally, but he must say he had seen signs of lack of enterprise m East Africa, where he found the Germans and Japanese back again pushing ahead of British firms. Sir R. S. Horne said he had come to the deliberate opinion that we were in a worse position to-day than six months ago, when it was bad enough. If they looked at the staple trades they could not help feeling anxiety and apprehension. There was no hope unless every section of the community combined in order to find a solution.

Sir Herbert Hambling said the position was bad, but not quite so bad as Sir R. Horne apparently thought.