PROTECTION RUN MAD.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1584, 30 October 1912, Page 4

PROTECTION RUN MAD.

A cable message in our issue of Monday served to remind the public that the German meat famine caused by the practical exclusion of frozen beef is still oppressing the German

people. The message was specially interesting for its summary of the strange fiscal doetrino preached by the Chancellor. He declared that "it was the duty of the Government to keep the Home meat production independent of foreign countries even if higher prices had to be paid for economic independence." He went on to give the German public the

cold comfort of an assurance 'that "they were not making sacrifices for a Protectionist policy, but were discharging a debt to the Fatherland for their safety" 1 To a people who are driven to the eating of dog's flesh this will appear to be an exceedingly thin defence of the oppressive food duties and meat import rogulations, but the Germans' troubles are their own; and for the rest of us the lesson of the Chancellor's extraordinary dictum concerning "economic independence" is, obviously, the absurdity of Protection on the German model. It is a sacred principle, in the German Government's eyes, that German agriculture can and must supply the needs of the German people. The fact that there is not enough meat, nor wheat nor rye nor milk nor butter in Germany to meet requirements is held to bo irrelevant to tho sacred principle referred to. In Berlin last August beef was over two shillings a pound, and veal and mutton were still dearer. During the first half of this year 5924 horses were slaughtered for food in Berlin, and within the last few months thirty new shops for tho sale of horseflesh have been opened. The Berlin correspondent of the New York Post gives some account of the situation on tho Swiss border. Four pounds of meat can be brought in to Germany by anybody duty free, with fcho_result that in tho villages on the Swiss side queues of German people wait outside the butchers' shops to buy beef at about eighteenpence a pound.

All Germany is feeling the pinch; the ordinary farmer makes nothing out of the price of meat, because the price of feed has risen enormously. All over Germany the press and the municipalities are doing their best to break down the conditions which aro making life hard for all save the wealthy. The hardships created by the Government's policy are nowhere denied: they are indeed admitted by the Chancellor in the speech which is recorded in Monday's cable message. "Economic independence" is a phrase as uncandid and really meaningless and misleading as the phrase 'social justice?' In the modern world there is no such thing as economic independence": there is no country capable of organising itself .to supply all its own needs with greater comfort to itself. Every country must import somethingfood or clothing or iron or manufactures—and must pay for it by exporting its surplus products. Germany has found that under present conditions it cannot provide all its own meat food; and what sense is there in, declaring that nevertheless foreign meat shall practically be denied entry t Some small class is of course making hugo profits out of the meat famino, but that" is a fact of great importance. The fact that is of importance is lhat the natural course of German commerce and exchange has been violent-' ,ly, distorted, and the result is that the real wealth of the nation is curtailed. If it wore decreed by Parliament that Britain should import no meat, a great section of the British people would have to do without meat; and, what is of far more importance, the total production of Britain would fall. New Zealand's practical interest in the matter" is not very much; although free markets for meat, or at any rate open markets, arc certainly very desh'o.bb from the New Zealand point of view. But the conditions created by the German Government's policy of economic independence" in agriculture are a lesson in the unwisdom of the strict Protectionist doctrine.