Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 1943. POST-WAR DEVELOPMENT.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 January 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 1943. POST-WAR DEVELOPMENT.

PEALING, in a speech reported yesterday, with the post-war

development of the Empire, the British Home Secretary (Mr Herbert Morrison) said a number of things that will meet with very general approval, but cannot be said to have thrown much new light on problems that will demand attention and treatment when the war is over.

I hope that after the war we shall be able to find it possible (Mr Morrison said in part) to achieve, without prejudice to our own primary obligation for the wellbeing and progress of British territories, some wider pooling of tasks and responsibilities with others. After the war the whole British Commonwealth, not the colonies alone, will need and want to adopt, as a condition of its own survival, enlightened policies of international co-operation. The myth of a self-sufficient Empire has gone the way of other historical illusions, and I hope and believe that British common sense has said goodbye to it for ever. After the war no Power, however great, will be able single-handed to secure its own security. Only in a wider system of political security will the Commonwealth find its own salvation.

All the more since presumably he was speaking with authority on behalf of the United Kingdom Government, as British Ministers normally do when dealing with questions of major policy, it must be regretted that Mr Morrison did not extend his observations into rather more explicit detail than he appears to have done on this occasion.

There is need and room for a much clearer definition of the lines on which the British Government considers that international co-operation should be developed after the wtfr in both fthe political and economic fields and the extent to which it thinks these great divisions of policy should be related one to another.

From his statement that the myth of a self-sufficient Empire has gone the way of other historical illusions, it may be assumed that Mr Morrison, as spokesman for the British Government, considers that international political co-operation after the Avar must connote economic co-operation. While, however, it is selfevident that all peace-loving nations must combine in. policing the world if any of them are to enjoy security, a practical approach to international economic co-operation is far enough from being dearly indicated.

Like a good many other people, Mr Morrison evidently is looking to a great extension and expansion of international trade, but how this is to be brought about remains to be determined and declared. A development of the kind can only be attained on a basis of mutual advantage and a true reconciliation of interests, and that this will not be achieved easily has been indicated of late in more or less authoritative statements made in a number of countries, Britain amongst them.

For instance, in his presidential address not long ago to the British National Union of Manufacturers, Sir Patrick Hannon spoke with concern of the extent to which British export trade was likely to be prejudiced by “the future immense productive power in competitive articles which has been erected within the Dominions.”

Besides suggesting that the Dominions should restrict their industrial development in the interests of United Kingdom trade, Sir Patrick Hannon’s observation obviously runs directly counter to the aims of international co-operation ■which have been stated in broad terms by the British Home Secretary. Obscure as the existing outlook is in many respects, it seems clear that international economic co-operation cannot be established on any other basis than that of the complete freedom of each individual country to organise and regulate its own internal economic development. International economic co-operation worthy of the name can only be developed voluntarily and in conditions of genuinely mutual interest.