The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. GISBORNE, JUNE 30, 1903. EMPIRE TRADE.

Gisborne Times, Volume IX, Issue 929, 30 June 1903, Page 2

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. GISBORNE, JUNE 30, 1903. EMPIRE TRADE.

■ The cables published each morning in regard to the Empire Trade movement afford much interest to those who pay any attention to such important questions, hut it is to he feared that they lose a great deal in value owing to the fact that the subject is being made a stalking horse of for electioneering purposes. The majority of the leading Oppositionists in the British House of Commons are contenting themselves with

talking round Hip subject or making ridiculous denunciations instead of trying to meet fact ■with countervailing fact and argument with argument. To-day Mr Asquith is ere tliteri with using the alphabet and multiplication tallies as comparisons —an awkward stretch of imagination One writer properly points out that ronnneree has become far from the pacific influence that our fathers had thought. .It was the belief of Cobden and Buckle and (heir school t hat

all civilised nations would speedily adopt the gospel of Free Trade, and that a complete assimilat ion or com-

munity of interests would he Unis established in which the importance o

Frontiers and tlags would almost disappear, and iitat in an essentially ndustrial civilisation the military spirit would sink into insignificance.

)f all the deceptions oi Hie Nine

teenth Century this has proved the greatest. in no other portion of the world's history has a larger

proportion of the population been trained to arms, and in very few has a larger amount of the world's abil-

ity been devoted to elaborating the means of destruction. Great Umpires and great Democracies of the world remain protectionist, and the attainment of spheres or monopolies of commerce has become one of the. chief objects of their national policy The desire to obtain new outlets for trade engenders the keenest international conflicts, and the partition with this object by the European States oi vast tracts oi the tiucivil-

sed world not only makes wars with barbarians inevitable but also adds very materially to the grounds o£ quarrel among civilised men.