THE TRADE COMMISSION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 299, 14 June 1912, Page 4

THE TRADE COMMISSION.

Everybody will regret that SSt Joseph Ward lias found it necessary to retire from the membership of the Imperial Trade Commission, for no colonial statesman carries more weight in the mixed counsels of the Empire than Sir Joseph Ward does, and he has such a solid grip of both financial and commercial considerations where New Zealand is concerned that he could have been depended upon to represent the Dominion at the conference with unqualified benefit to all classes in the country. The decision was, of course, a matter purely for himself, and it is one which no one has a right to question, but it is none the less regrettable. The conference is not to be a mere discussion of trade methods and trade principles, for it is calculated to cover a much wider sphere of usefulness. As Lord Desborough has pointed out, it is becoming daily more apparent that if the Empire is to live it must consolidate in commerce as well as in defence. Great Britain, he points out, a generation ago was supreme in commerce and feared in arms, but the progress of other countries now more than threatened her, supremacy in commerce. It is to guard this very supremacy and to protect her trade routes that the Empire has striven so hard to maintain her naval supremacy, I but in this fight something has been lost of the importance of the cause in the ' striving after the effect. The two subjects are inalienably associated, and the time has arrived when the Motherland can fairly look to her dependencies for more assistance than they have previously given, both in respect to commerce and defence. The questions of reciprocity and preference require very careful handling, so that their incidence may meet the differing requirements of varying communities of interest. It is in the discussion of such problems that Sir Joseph "Ward's assistance would have been of such material value to the Empire in general and to the Dominion in' particular. Still, even in his absence, the Commission is such a thoroughly representative one that we can safely look for its deliberations to succeed in safeguarding that Imperial loyalty, unity and strength upon which sound basis the Empire can alone continue to hold its place in the forefront of the nations.