MR CHURCHILL AT LEEDS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 8734, 7 February 1907, Page 2

MR CHURCHILL AT LEEDS.

Press Association—Copyright. London, February 6.

Mr Winston Churchill, at the Chamber of Commerce dinner at Leeds, drew a lesson from Jamaica and a score of needs elsewhere, that it was an urgent necessity to establish a squadron of warships of some sort or other to patrol outlying possessions.

Mr Churchill also said tho system of commercial conference started by the late Government would be extended and made regular, bringing practical business men throughout tho country into closer relations with high officials of colonial offices; Referring, to. the Colonial Conference, he said there would be on all sides unrestricted freedom and frankness in the discussions. Mr Churchill also said the British Government valued highly the preferences already offered by the colonies because of the loyal and noble sentiment prompting them, because they were freely given, and because in that way the colonies wore able in to make some return to the Motherland for her great expenditure in common defence; The Übvornment also sympathised with and supported the growing practice of intercolonial preference, because it involved lowering Customs duties and facilitated the approach of intercolonial free trade, the goal of both farin' reformers and free traders in Britain.