Even' the third Resolution, that which deals with Customs duties,
is in reality -governed by war needs. The necessity for waking the whole population of the country share in the burden of our war expenditure has become imperative. However much we may desire that the working classes should escape war taxation, the thing has become impossible. It is to be feared also that it will prove politically impossibk to take direct taxation any lower than at present. If that is so, we shall have, like every other State in the world, to raise taxes from what the Resolution calls the estab- lishment of " a wider range of Customs duties." But if there is to be a wider range of Custom duties, then unquestionably it will be round economically as well as politically to reduce those Customs on the precincts and manufactures of the Empire, aed also to use the ,power of reduction by means of commercial - treaties with -Allied and neutral Powers. Germany has taught us only too well bow potent for war purposes a commercial policy may he.
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