CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 4, 6 January 1936, Page 10

CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE

14TH CONGRESS AT WEU

LINCTON

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, December 7.

At a meeting of the Federation of Chambers of the British Empire, held on Thursday, at the London Chamber of , Commerce, Sir Thomas Wilford, director of, the National Bank of New Zealand and formerly High Commissioner for New Zealand, was unanimously, elected chairman, of the council of the federation in succession to the late Sir John Sandeman' Allen. Subsequently, Sir George McLaren Brown, European general manager of the Canadian Pacific Railway, was appointed deputy chairman and Sir John Bell, a partner, in Gray, Dawes, and Co., and formerly president of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, treasurer. The president, of the federation, Viscount Elibank, presided at the opening of the proceedings. It was announced that preliminary arrangements for the, fourteenth congress of chambers of commerce of the Empire, to be held in Wellington at the beginning of October, 1936, were well in hand. There will also be a comprehensive tour of both North and South Islands. The local organisation is in the hands of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of New Zealand, but the New Zealand Government will play a prominent part, and have already undertaken to give free travelling facilities all over the Dominion to the visiting delegates. It will be a unique occasion: the congress, the first of which took place as long ago as 1886 and which is now held triennially, has never before met in New Zealand. Delegates will be present from all over the Empire. The council received a report upon various subjects which were before the last congress, held in London in 1933, including Imperial air communications, Imperial education, bills of lading, and Empire telephone services, and decided to set up a special committee to consider. the best line to adopt with reference to the Congo Basin Treaties in view of the deadlock which appears to have arisen.