ECONOMIC CONFERENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 97, 21 October 1926, Page 15

ECONOMIC CONFERENCE

OBSTACLES TO SUCCESS

AUSTRALIAN OBJECTION TO ANY INTERFERENCE.

Writing in the "Commercial and Financial Chronicle," New York, Mr. Hartley Withers saya o£ the Imperial Economic Conference: "Already, months before the conference is" likely to meet, a voice of protest lias ' been raised in Australia against any discussion of the domestic concerns of that flourishing Dominion. At the end of July a Labour -leader, Mr. Charlton, submitted a motion in the House of Representatives, at Melbourne, to.the effect that the Australian delegates should oppose strenuously any attempt to include matters of domestic concern in the agenda of the Economic Conference. He said that the league was treading on dangerous ground in proposing to investigate immigration, -ariffs, or the relation ■of area to population. Australia would not allow any outside body to interfere in these questions." Two days later it was announced by Mr. Bruce, in the same Assembly, that Mr. Charlton's amendment had achieved its object. "Both sides of the House," it was added by the Attor-ney-General, "were in agreements on the objects of the League and its non-inter-ference in Australian domestic questions." "If other countries approach the coming Conference with feelings at all similar to those expressed in the Australian Parliament, its guns will haye been effectively spiked before they are even drawn up in position. Every act of government is, or can be represented as being in one sense or another a domestic concern. Tariffs and immigration policies are most evidently questions of domestic concern, but they are at the same time questions that also affect other nations very closely, and go would seem to be a matter which might with good effect be discussed by a body which is supposed to be trying to in> prove international relations, and incidentally to restore international trade, and the prosperity that flows from it into tho pockets of all the participating nations. But discussion will be impossible if many of the delegates are going to be inspired by the spirit which breathed over the Australian Parliament. Perhaps, however, we may hope that this will not be so, and that other peoples will send delegates instructed to listen in a reasonable frame of mind to any suggestions that may be made for endeavouring to restore and improve on the level of ■ prosperity that was enjoyed before the war. It was by no means ideal, and could easily be left far behind if the nations would agree to work and trade together to meet it. But as long as politicians are so anxious about their own infallibility that they' will not listen to opinions from outside, they will doubtless continue to strangle the trade of the world as successfully aa they have done in the last few years."