The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, JULY 15, 1913. IMPERIAL PREFERENCE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 59, 15 July 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, JULY 15, 1913. IMPERIAL PREFERENCE.

In a collection of his speeches lately published Lord Milner appeals that Party feeling be put aside on behalf of the weal of the Empire. He exhorts his countrymen that they be nrst Imperialists and mere Party politicians afterwards. The “Financial .Sews” considers this to be timely

warning, considering how “the generous determination of one Dominion to contribute to the strengthening of the Imperial Navy—a good resolution .vhich is peculiar to no particular Party in that land—lias been distort'd by furious Party spirit and thrown into a Party arena which it never should have been allowed to enter.” But in this respect the Motherland s not without reproach, the same writer points out, because for ten long years the great question of Imperial preference has been tossed about on Party eddies fill the original meaning of this great conception has been well nigh lost. “It might, of course. h> argued,” says the News, “that if preference to Greater Britain be mpossihle without taxation of food in the Mother Country, the taxpayer ins a right to tic consulted in the nntier. That, of course, is undeniable; hut if the working man ahsolute-

ly refuse's to allow a farthing to ho put on tho loai, why cannot prefci - (■lice he given to the self-governing Dominions on articles which aie already subject to a tax or an excise? Tim French have a saying that even

little gifts keep friendship warm, and while to-day it may not be possible! to do all that Mr Chamberlain asked 1 Ins countrymen to do in May, 1903,! it should be quite possible to make; some fiscal concessions to our oversea brethren which would kindle gratitude out of all proportion to tire actual sacrifice made. All that is necessary is for Imperialists, on both sides of the House of Commons to put aside for the moment Party cries, and to work with a view not to advantage in the next electoral contest, but for the- sole good of the Empire.”