Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 1931 LOOKING TO OTTAWA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 12 January 1931, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 1931 LOOKING TO OTTAWA

THE expected advent of Mr Forbes raises again in the public mind the abortive discussions of the Dominion Premiers with the British Government at the Imperial Conference, last October and November. While the Prime Minister of Canada made concrete proposals for promoting the economic co-operation of the Empire, and though the Prime Ministers of other Dominions were anxious to discuss those proposals, the British Government systematically refused to discuss them, and in their place put foiward certain vague and impracticable suggestions in reference, to wheat quotas which were quite unacceptable to Mr Bennett. When the Conference had ended, and the British Conservative leader was about to move his vote of censure oil the British Government for its failure to consider the Dominions proposal of reciprocal fiscal preferences, the London “Times” in a leading article regretted “the disappointment which has been caused in all the Dominions by the met that on the economic side the Conference had so little to show for its six weeks’ labour,” and alter referring to “the apathetic attitude of the (British) Government,” the premier London journal went on to say: Ministers are still. apparently content to -watch with lethargic indifference the dislocation of British markets by the dumping of large quantities of goods at prices only made possible by the exploitation of what is practically indistinguishable from slave labour. . . It is refreshing, in the general atmosphere of discouragement, to note that the Dominion Prime Ministers, disappointed as they are with the results of the Conference, are still full of hope for the future. Mr Thomas, for his part made the most in a broadcast address of the little that the Conference has achieved; but lie, too, urged his hearers to be of good hope of the results to be achieved at Ottawa. It is. not reasonable to imagine, he argued, in view of the time, trouble, and expense involved, that the Governments of the Empire would have agreed to meet again, to resume their adjourned discussions on economic cooperation, unless they had good reason fo be confident of the outcome. That is true enough. But it is equally true that their hope will be doomed once more to disappointment unless our own Government go to Ottawa in a very different spirit from that which they displayed throughout the London Conference. They need to prepare themselves much more seriously, to have a far more definite policy, and to show a much greater determination to make the Conference a success.

The people of New Zealand will bo glad to hear what Mr Forbes lias to say as to the London Conference, but more pleased to hear what he has to say as to the prospects of the Ottawa Conference; why there is reason to think that tho British Government’s attitude at Ottawa will be different from what it was at London; and what reasons there are to think that the Ottawa Conference will be successful. Our own view of the London Conference is that nothing was possible in the presence of Mr Snowden, whose almost fanatical attachment to the fetish of Free Trade made it impossible for him to discuss the policy of reciprocal preferences which the Dominion Premiers proposed; and the impression which we have received, after reading such meagre accounts of the Conference as the British Government allowed to be published, is that Mr MacDonald, living in an ntmophere of detachment from the interests of the British Empire, was frankly bored by the Conference’s proceedings. In such circumstances, the Dominion Premiers adjourned the Conference to Ottawa, with a hope that away from the blighting presence of the British Cabinet and in the hopeful atmosphere of the premier Dominion something helpful may be accomplished in the direction of Empire economic co-opera-tion. Presumably neither Mr MacDonald nor Mr Snowden will attend the Ottawa Conference; indeed before it meets the Government, of which they are the controlling personalities, may have ceased to exist; in which case the success of the gathering in the Canadian capital might be expected to accomplish much and, in anticipation of such an event, it very well may be that Mr Bennett, with the approval of the other Dominion Premiers, will not convene tho Ottawa Conference until the demise of Mr MacDonald’s Government has taken place.