The Real Path to Prosperity
Empire Trade and the World Background
THE Board of Education has just published the results 1 of an enquiry into . the teaching in the schools of the • geography of the British Empire. The finding of the Committee is such as to explode the myth of " wide- spread ignorance " which has been assiduously cultivated in certain quarters. Can we be sure, however, that the present generation, nurtured to some extent in the stress of formidable economic war, really understands and appreciates the organism of the Empire ? It is of the utmost importance that all of us should remember its historical evolution and what it stands for in the world to-day. In a previous article we recorded General Smuts' reminder to his Canadian hearers that the British Commonwealth is the first Empire to be based on equality and freedom. This loose confederation—a procession of peoples at varying stages in their advance towards complete self-government—is, of course, unique in the world's history. It is a political organism from which the very idea of war is banished as between the various members, and therein is an example of what in time the League of Nations may compass in seeking peace by conference. It is by the same token a pattern of free, national, cultural, and racial development. Finally, this free organism has its own peculiar and serious responsibility to the rest of the world. That is the point on which our attention must now be focussed, in view of the threat of disruption to which the economic nationalism of the Empire Crusaders exposes the British Commonwealth. We agree entirely with Professor Zim- mern, who argues in The Third British Empire that " to avert the conflict of economic policies is a primary responsibility of the peoples of the British Common- wealth."
We welcome therefore the fresh air of reality that Was brought last week into the- heated atmosphere of Empire economic unity. On Tuesday, Lord Melchett, on his return from a business tour in South Africa, made a statement which, while full of encouragement for those who are seeking closer co-operation within the Empire, was only too emphatic as to the " disastrous effect " of the sound and fury which has characterized fiscal controversy at home since the beginning of the year: On the same day Lord Salisbury rendered fine service to common sense by appealing to all those concerned for the improvement of British trade to begin by realizing the true perspective of the -fiscal question. By way of enlightening Lord Beaverbrook- as to why British industry cannot compete effectively in the markets of the world to-day, he referred to the Balfour Report with its observations as to " the out-of-date equipment and organization of our factories, and the low standard in our higher control " ; to the recent D'Abernon Report on South America where " British merchants show a want of adaptability and enterprise," &c. &c. And business men • in this country are now 'with 'one' accord, as we have said, facing trade realities. Thus we may hope that this question of developing unity and co-operation among the several parts of the British Commonwealth will be lifted out of fiscal ruts into the straight and smooth road which was mapped out in the article by Sir Robert Hadfield that we published last week.
Those of us who recognize that trade is exchange, not war, and deplore the fact that still in Professor Rappard's words " contemporary statesmanship seems unwilling or unable to pay the price of real peace in terms of freer economic intercourse," cannot but be impatient with the avowed purpose of the new Imperialists to injure ".the foreigner." The prosperity of each depends so obviously on the prosperity of all, just as the present scourge of unemployment -is common to all the great industrial nations. No more crushing indictment of the latest Imperialist ramp has been made than the speech at Staf- ford on February 27th by Mr. W. Ormsby-Gore, himself a Conservative M.P., and one . who probably knows -the actual conditions of the Empire as well as any other person in the country. It is, as he said, " really dangerous " to revive apprehensions in the Dominions that this island should ever seek again to dictate the fiscal and commercial policy of the oversea countries. Still more to the point was his warning of the " most dire results and reactions " in the Crown Colonies, Protectorates, and Mandated Territories, if there should be even the threat by Government action at home to override the wishes of the local inhabitants. The present clamour in the West Indies is an earnest of the perils of Imperial Preference.
It is precisely such threats that poison the atmosphere of world trade. The fate of the European Tariffs Con- ference at Geneva seems, indeed, to suggest that the nations are not yet ready to renounce economic war as an instrument of national policy, even under the pressure of the new American economy. In the meantime, however, apart from this approach, there is in force, as in the continuous co-operation and erection of peace machinery at Geneva, a very real system of co-operation, with the means for withdrawing the sting from discrimin- atory trade policies in backward countries—in the Mandates system. We have not space here to show how the Mandates system, which survived as by a miracle from the Peace Conference as the only hopeful alternative to annexation, has entirely changed the conditions of Colonial trade policies. The success of this experiment, the gradual building up of a body of international mandatory law, has been ably defined and analysed in a recent book sketching the history of the principle of economic equality, the Open Door, as it is commonly known. We would refer our readers to this book.* It is against such a background that Empire development and avenues of prosperity have to be explored. For, to those of us who know what the League system has accomplished and what changes it is making in this whole question of international rivalry for raw materials and tropical produce, Professor Parker Moon's words are conclusive :— " . . it is true that the ' old imperialism ' and the new trustee. ship ' cannot live together in so small a world as ours. The idea of trusteeship, the public criticism of administration in the man- dates . . . must inevita,bly, though insensibly, influence the administration of colonies legally outside the mandate sphere."
*The Open Door and the Mandates System. By Benjamin Gerig. (Allen" and Unwin; 10a.) '
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