The Dominion. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1916. ADVICE FROM ABROAD.

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2922, 7 November 1916, Page 4

The Dominion. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1916. ADVICE FROM ABROAD.

_ It is not without a bearing on practical policy that some of the bitterest laments about Britain's prospective abandonment of free trade have come from the western side of the.. Atlantic. Even tho pained surprise with which unyielding devotees of the Manchester school are watching a world in which they. have long ruled as oracles tumbling in ruin about their ears is surpassed and excelled by the distress excited by the same phenomena in the breasts of some Americans. Threats of trade retaliation, as well as ostensibly altruistic remonstrances and advice, have come from the United States since it was made plain to the world that sweeping changes • in British commercial policy were likely to result from, and follow, the war. At the moment it is not the obviously practical aspects of the American -,attitudo that hold our attention, :: but the fact that deep and professedly disinterested concern over Britain's contemplated abandonment of a. policy which has subsisted long enough to take on a mellow flavour of tradition finds free expression in American newspapers which profess to speak for and represent what is best in the life of the Bepublic. An example in point is an article lately published by the New York S'veiling Post, in which the prospects of free trade surviving in Britain are discussed in a spirit of dark pessimism, both as regards the immediate issue and the results which may be expected to follow on the heels of change. "Abhorrent as is the idea that England may take this plunge backward—not only repudiating its proud and splendid record of free trade,' but actually going back to - medieval notions of international jealousy and ill-will —it is necessary," says the writer of the article, "to face the fact that the forces making in favour of it are extremely powerful." There is more in the same strain, and the concluding observation is that: "it behoves all those Englishmen who hold dear one of the greatest of their country's traditions, and who see in its abandonment at this time and in the sinister manner that is proposed the promise of woes immeasurable for all mankind, to gird themselves at once for a struggle that will test to the utmost all their virtue and all their strength." Passing over the flavour of platitude it carries, talk of this kind would command respect if we could accept' it at its face value as an altruistic appeal made with a single eye to the interests of Britain and mankind. But we would need to be amazingly simple and singularly Wind to a few staring facts to regard it as anything of tho kind. We may set down such appeals to the more or less conscious inspiration of the big business interests in America, which look with commercial disapproval upon any limitation of the open freedom of British _ markets, or to the spirit of possibly self-deceiving humbug I which is a striking and unedifying I feature of • American politics and ! public life at tho present day. No other explanation which commends itself to reason is available. An ostensibly disinterested plea for the maintenance of free trade in another country comes oddly enough in any case from a country which, by the showing of its own spokesmen, has reached tho foremost place among nations undor a policy of High Protection. . Modified as it has been under' the programme of the present Democratic administration, the United States tariff still j presents a series of formidable barriers to the approach of external

trade. Tho plea is stranger still when the wider circumstances of the question at stake are taken into account. Britain, as every schoolboy knows, is a free trade island in a protectionist ocean, embracing, for practical purposes, the wholeworld, and even in Britain free • trade dates only from the middle of last century. Without going into the detail merits of trade policy it is suroly somewhat unconvincing to contend that Britain will sacrifice her own interests or set the world by the ears if she reverts to a .policy which has for many years been firmly established in every other country of any importance, hex own Dominions included. A moro indulgent eye might bo turned upon such advice as is tendered in the article above quoted were it not that the change in policy which it attacks is a positive and imperative necessity of tho circumstances in which wc_ are placed. In this very article it is remarked that: — "One argument for the change which must bo admitted to have a certain amount of truth is that drawn from the need of self-dependence in those things which arc essential for national defence. If the proposed tariff were framed with an honest desire to do this and nothing more there would _ be no great harm." But even this grudging admission, of the New York newspaper- is at once qualified by assertions that the need .of. self-dependenco in things essential for national defence will be used as a pretext for going much further than is necessary, and finally the need is brushed aside- in an appeal to Englishmen to_exert "all their virtue, and all their strength," in opposing a change of fiscal policy. Claptrap of this character would deserve little enough attention if there were not some_ reason to fear that ideas about Britain's future trade policy which find free expression in America have a wider and stronger hold in Britain itself than the actual_ volume of expression they gain in that country would indicate. As we pointed out some time ago the Imperial Government is displaying no very purposeful activity in the way of giving practical shape to the resolutions of the IVia Economic Conference, and tho outlook for the future would be hotter than it is if wo had some room definite assurance than, is yet available that Britain will not bo left after tho war open to the commercial aggression of her beaten enemy. So much assured we could afford to smile at the-dark predictions of American writers of the type quoted that wo and tho world : will havo cause to rue our adoption of a policy under which the '■ United States and most other countries have thriven reasonably well. [