Evening Post. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1932. THE SPIRIT OF OTTAWA

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 124, 22 November 1932, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1932. THE SPIRIT OF OTTAWA

We are told to-day that, in the opinion of the London Press, "not since the fateful days of July,-1914, has the world faced a week of such momentous gravity in international affairs." In Washington the President and the President-elect are meeting to discuss the war debt problem. At Geneva, after more than a year's delay, the League of Nations will have to come to a decision on the Manchurian problem on which the peace of the Far East and the future of the League itself depend. Germanyis in the throes of a political crisis which, to say the least, is of intimate concern to the peace of Europe. The third of the Round .Table Conferences on India- will meet in London, and "the problems of taxation and unemployment which the British Parliament must face are only • less momentous." While Britain still remains die chief hope of the world's peace, these grave domestic problems are aggravated by the probability that, as theresult of a decision in which she will have no voice, she will have, on the 15th of next month to ; make a payment in Washington of about £20,000,000 for which her Budget makes no provision, and by the fact that after all her efforts the year is likely to close with an adverse trade balance of £90,000,000 —which is £15,000,000 worse than last year's. In these circumstances self-interest combines with benevolence in ensuring for Britain thesympathy of the rest of the world, and to that sympathy the ties of kinship and all the benefits that we have received and are still receiving at her hands should make the contribution of New Zealand second to none.. If there is little or nothing that we can contribute' in the way of practical, help, it is at any rate a time at which we should refrain from aggravating the troubles of our best friend and our indispensable protector. In our criticism, of % the speech with which the Governor-General opened the session we noted that it expressed general satisfaction with the results of the Lausanne / and Ottawa Conferences, and referred also to references to the wo/k of the League of :-Nations, and the Disarma-ment-Conference and the prospects of . -the- World Economic Conference, yet there was no recognition of the fact ' that all those names were to a very large extent but -so many aliases for. the statesmanship of Britain, and only once was her name mentioned in a speech extending to a full column. New Zealand, we said, is as proud of her and as dependent upon her as ever, but there, was no hint of it in the Speech from the Throne yesterday. We are glad to say that for this!.unfortunate mistake on the part of His Excellency's advisers some compensation has sincebeen made by the two most important of them. In his Financial Statement the Prime Minis r ter made two acknowledgments of "tlie generosity of Great _ Britain," without which the deficit would have nearly doubled. The more detailed of the two was as follows:— Following the Hon. Downie Stewart's personal representations in London in regard' to our difficulties, Great Britain has1 again, extended a helping hand by consenting .to postpone ' for another year all payments due ,-on our1 Funded War Debt "and certain other debts due to the British Government. The additional relief to this year's Budget is £825,000, in addition to which a saving of £47,000 will-accrue to the State Advances Office. -Our grateful thanks'; are duo.to the Mother Country for this substantial measure of assistance during the acute period of our troubles; An acute period, it may be added, not only of pur troubles, but of her own. The debate on the Ottawa Agreement provided both Mr. Forbes and Miy Goates with similar opportunities of which they took full advantage. An Agreement has been entered into, said the Prime Minister, in which Britain has been generous to a degree,"and, when JE. first heard of the arrangement' that had been come to I said that it was simply another instance of the generosity of Great \ Britain toward New Zealand. She has recognised the needs of [our producers. * It was on these needs that Mr. Coates had based his opening appeal at the Conference, and he was of course as emphatic as his colleague in recognising the generous attitude of Britain. He was even more Emphatic than his chief in his insistence on the spirit of the "gentlemen's agreement" as of more importance than its letter, and in the declaration that the lowering of trade restrictions was the aim of the whole Conference. • Mr. Baldwin had set the keynote in his open-

ing address to the Conference, which was quoted by ■: Mr. Coates with approval as follows:— . There avo two ways in which increased preference, can be given— either by lowering barriers among ourselves, or by raising them against others. . . . We should endeavour to follow the first rather than the second course. . : ; After 'adding that every delegation subscribed to this ideal Mr. Coates added:— ' ;V Before referring in "detail to our Agreement, I desire to emphasise that loyalty to its spirit requires that we should proceed by way of removing barriers to trade—-barriers and hind-' ranees which are so largely responsible for common-impoverishment in a world abounding with the means of plenty. Without pretending to know the attitude .of Mr. Coates to the agitation in favour of inflating exchange but confessing to a suspicion that he favoured it,' Mr. E. Salmond, president of the New Zealand Importers' Federation, said yesterday that such an attitude, would, to say the least, be most inconsistent, since "high exchange would accentuate, and not remove, trade barriers." We desireto support Mr. Salmond's contention regarding high exchange with evidence that it lias been advanced in even stronger, terms, by members of the British Government; including Mr. Baldwin himself. Speaking in London on the-31st May, Mr. L. HoreBelisha, who was then Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, but whose promotion since the Liberal resignations has made something like a', "proxiirie accessit" to the Cabinet, ' was . reported by "The Times" as follows :-— The old way. of dealing with international trade was dead. A . new world had come into being in the last three months. This was an age of quotas and exchango restrictions. This was not an age of tariffs. Tariffs were very aimplo obstacles compared with the new obstacles to trade which we were resolved to remove. A few weeks later Mr. Baldwin dealt more specifically with the exchange problem in his reply to the Labour Party's cerisure motion on the 23rd June. |. There were,'he said, no fewer than, thirty foreign countries to-day that had some kind of exchange restrictions, and. in many cases those restrictions were such that it was almost impossible to bring, currency from one country to another. ' It had nothing to do with any policy of ours. All these things were done before British policy' was declared, and all these restrictions applied not only to us but to all countries alike; and perhaps these restrictions, becauso of their different nature in different countries, were telling to-day more against the recovery of trade than even tariffs themselves. • Tariffs are thus described by one British Minister as "very simple obstaples" compared with exchange restrictions, and conversely these restrictions are described by another as perhaps more^ serious hindrances to the recovery of trade than "even tariffs themselves." It is trie Ottawa keynoter who makes this last remark, and largely, through his good offices Mr. Coates returns from Ottawa with a 15 per cent, pre-tariff preference for a large number of our primary producers. One reply suggested is that we'should protect all ,of these producers by a device which our British friends, regard'as worse than a hostile tariff, and to complete the neatness of the irony this penalty on British trade is to be fixed •15.per cent, in exact agreement with the benefit that we are receiving from Britain! Mr. Forbes:and Mr.\Coates must either take a firm stand against the high exchange, or withdraw most of the good things that they said about gratitude to Britain, putting the whole before the part, and the spirit of Ottawa. ; ■