WISE MEN FROM THE EAST.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXV, Issue 13058, 28 April 1910, Page 2

WISE MEN FROM THE EAST.

(Contributed.) There have been several references in the cables from Home recently to a small group of persons, palling themselves “Imperial Pioneers.” They are said to be persons from the colonies who have appointed themselves apostles to the fiscally ignorant Freetrade Britishers, with a view to their conversion to something different, which the apostles think would be ever so much wiser. It is possible that, if the Dominions had actually ordained a few men to preach Preference to colonial products, or even to advocate unalloyed Protection, they would have been listened to with toleration. But the people in the various towns visited have taken to breaking up the meetings of the self-appointed. And they are quite justified in doing it. For the interference of the apostles—their insolent assumption that they only are the Tejiositories of fiscal wisdom and the British nation are all fools, must be anything but soothing to the people of the Old Land. We can only gauge their feelings by imagining what we should think if some self-appointed apostles of Freetrade were to come over to us from Britain —men knowing nothing of the peculiar circumstances of our country, and ignorant of the rudiments of political economy —and endeavoured to instruct us in our own business.

But the mission of the self-called to England—grotesque and preposterous as it is • —is only what might have been expected from the spirit of arrogant self-conceit which characterises a fair proportion of they denizens of new countries, like the Dominion, and especially the young, untravelled, and ignorant. Many of them take their inspiration from the Sydney Bulletin, to which England and everything English are synonymous for slow', .mistaken, and decadent. They assert, apparently without .recourse to statistics, that, under .her present fiscal policy, Britain is losing her trade, that her merchants are archaic in their ‘ methods of business—so different to the" smartness of the Yankee and the German—that her workers' are ill-paid and on the verge of starvation, that the conceptions of her politicians as to international exchange are foolish fetishes, that the balance of trade is against her,and that the time cannot, therefore, be far distant when she wall bo a pauper among the nations.

Well, she may bo wrong, or she may be rierht. Or even in the vastuess of such a field -as world-trade, in its manifold intricacies and ramifications, there is room for her to be both right and wrong. It should, also tend to induce a spirit of toleration of'other people’s business methods, which mostly affect themselves, to consider that the wisest heads in the world may be found on both sides of the controversy. A study of history will convince, us. too, that we ascribe too much influence to make or mar a nation’s trade to its fiscal policy. Great national characteristics and the accident of a favourable geographical position are even more potent for prosperity than if the gods had endowed the country with fabulous mineral wealth. Yenetia rose to be a world-power on a mere sand-heap. China, with enormous stores'of mineral wealth, and the so-called balance of trade in her favour, can scarcely be set, up as the great example to the nations. There are greater potentialities of wealth, of prosperity, of wide dominion in some infinitesimal improvement in the brain cells of a nation than in fiscal policies or any concrete sources of wealth. Now. as to decadence and business methods. Tire Premier of West Australia tells ns that he sees no signs of British decadence, and he warmly praises their; methods of business. And When Mr Stead invited the colonial delegates to the Imperial Conference to state their views on Britain and the British, they almost unnanimously agreed that the ideas they had formed in their countries that poor old Britain was on the downward grade had been dissipated by actual observation. Statistics, tod, are eloquent of progress. In 1870 the total gross imports and exports of the United Kingdom were worth 547 millions, an. average of £l7 10s lOtl per head. ■ In 1907 the figures came to the enormous total of 11.84 mi'lions, and ■£26 7s lOd per head. The figures are exclusive of bullion and specie. Probably even such dense persons as the “Imperial Pioneers” would be inclined to concede thet the British people were not all fools and deadbeats if they did a little analytical work among statistics and looked out upon the work! with intelligent eyes. A r.at'on which is the richest in Europe, has a larger trade per head than any other, works shorter hours, draws larger wages, ■ carries the world’s trade in its ships, that has built up the largest Empire that the world has ever seen, or ever will see, that is abreast of the world in invention, in art and science, and ahead of the work’ in a multitude of Christ-like charities, is. r.ot altogether so blind to its, material interests as the purblind Imperial Busybodies; imagine. Wlnm the people have rot rid of the House of Lords, which'now w'ts tight on vicious monopolies and blots Britain will bo as nice a ■ country' to live in as there is under the sun.