The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2l, 1916. TRADE PROBLEMS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 67, 24 February 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1916. TRADE PROBLEMS.

After-the-war trade problems have been occupying a good deal of attention in Britain, and recently the Commercial Intelligence Committee of the Board of Trade in its report, upon the post-war trade problems has put its finger upon an old sore. It proposes that in future British shipowners should be prohibited from charging higher rates from Britain than from points in North Europe. A writer on shipping and commercial questions remarks that this is a practice which British free traders, fair traders, and all sorts of traders cannot look back upon without some shame. It was notorious that in order to compete with subsidised foreign ships British steamers were carrying certain classes of l German goods to New Zealand cheaper (than they carried the British article. The Dominions Royal Commission gathered facts about it in New Zealand and roundly denounced it. Colonial newspapers kept protesting about it. Yet nothing was done. Britain was soaked in theories about free trade and in addition any interference with this privilege might have offended the Germans and brought on war. So British politicians argued, and so they deceived themselves and us. The authority referred to concludes that surely the little reform now seriously urg-

od on l.ehalf of the British Board of Trade will be among the first and most permanent of the results of the war whatever else we may do to help the B'rifl'i'sih turn mil aet'u rer and to keep the German in his place. Ihe astounding revelations which the war has caused to he made regarding hov, foolishly Britain has fed German trad.' and German shipping and provided the sinews of war which the enemy has so treacherously used against ourselves and civilisation at large ought to provide a never-to-be-forgotten lesson.