Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 1929 THE ECONOMIC WAR

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 5 August 1929, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 1929 THE ECONOMIC WAR

THE London "Morning Post" has spoken p'ainlv on Britain's economic danger ir: stubbornly clinging to the principle of free trade in a world of protection. Originating with the repeal of the Corn Laws—which was sane and sensible in an industrial nation which was growing at such a rate as to be unable to produce enough food in its own country—the British free traders applied the principle of the open market to manufactured products, because they hoped to lead the way to the adoption of universal free trade, and because they believed, and believed rightly at the time, that their manufacturers had nothing to fear from foreign competition in the home market. But the times have changed. The nations of the European Countries have become expert manufacturers of those very commodities in which Britain had practically a monopoly seventy and eighty years ago; and in addition the United States have become competitors with Britain m the markets of the world and in Britain's own home market, while they themselves are so amply protected by high tariffs that British manufactures are barred from entering America. We have' frequently called British free-trade a fetish. It is worse than that. It is a disease which threatens Britain's industrial life. That is

evidently the opinion of "The Morning Post," which snys : Let us join in protecting ourselves against American imposition. Let us also build a tariff wall and so shape our trade as to make the British Em-

pire independent of the- whole world. While it will be very difficult to persuade a nation, which cannot feed itself, to put a tax on imported food, nevertheless it should be possible to persuade that nation to tax out manufactured goods which it is itself producing cheaply and in abundance. There is every reason to think that if that is not done scon, British industrialism will receive such a blow as may well-nigh kill it. For the United States, having obtained, as a result of the Great War, the greater part of the gold in the world, has found it difficult to find a use for that gold, and so is using it as a basis of paper credit with which to stimulate manufactures and industry generally, and by means of mass production is creating an immense bulk of clieaj) manufactured goods with which to flood tho markets of the world. Britain, being without, a protective tariff, will fall an easy prey, and her industrialists, finding their home market swamped with cheap American goods, will bo in a sorry plight. There are two kinds of war possible in the world —tho war waged with weapons and tho economic war; and though the former kind of warfare may, or may not, be banished by tho Kellogg Peace Pact, economic war is well within the rules which govern international relationships, and may be equally dangerous to a nation's welfare. It is as bad to be drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine as in tho dirty water of tho Thames; in each case the result is tho same. It would Be a sorry thing if Britain's greatness, which survived' the terrible carnage of tho years 1914-1918, should fall before tho mass production of the innumerable American imitators of tho industrial methods of Henry Ford. Yet that is what is possible, if Britain's free trade fanatics prevent her taking those simple and obvious precautions which will protect her industrial life. The London journal sees this clearly enough, and calls upon British industrialists to shape a policy of defence. British commerce must get busy (it says) otherwise it will wake up*one morning and find even Dominion preference gone. Then this country will shrink from an Empire to an island. We do not think that process of decadence would be as rapid as that. The economic war may be quite as deadly as actual -military warfare, but its processes are slower. We make bold to say that if argument and commonsense are not able to bring the British nation to a realisation of its perilous position, so soon as tho. wounds caused by America's economic policy are felt the British free trade fetish will be exploded, and the nation will demand that protection which will give it relief. The economic union of the Empire would follow naturally and speedily, and Britain's greatness be assured for generations to come. Her free traders may cause her to suffer much, but no one who knows Great Britain well will believe that she will allow them to ruin her.