Canada is the only market in the world where German trade during the last few years has lost relative ground. Nothing, we should have thought, but the sheer mania for 'crabbing the Colonies' could dispute the force of this contrast or disparage the Dominion for considerably swelling, by the evident action of preference, these recent Board of Trade returns in which Free Traders so eminently rejoice. Of the economic potency of preference as a general principle there could be no more forcible suggestion. No one, however, supposes that the Colonies will permanently concede privilege to the Mother Country in their markets without some reciprocity in ours. Preference means relative advantage under the British flag for British as against foreign producers. Free Trade in this market for colonists and aliens indifferently is not preference: it gives no more advantage to Australians and Canadians who fought in the War than to Argentine citizens who, as far as we are concerned, are simply political bystanders, or to Russian mujiks, who might be mobilized against us.
If we give exactly the same support to the Argentine Republic as we do to the Australian Commonwealth, upon what intelligible principle do we expect that Australia shall make special sacrifices to help us? For sentiment? Armaments are not created nor wars waged for sentiment. Were the Colonies prepared to tax themselves for Imperial purposes, to fight under the Imperial flag, for reasons no more urgent than those of sentiment, they would not be patriotic, but insane. Do we expect the Colonies, then, to combine with us for the joint defence of equally vital interests—for the maintenance of the whole vast maritime Commonwealth in whose undiminished and increasing power resides the sole security of its confederate nationalities and fiefs? The Colonies may well question whether we possess even now, when our relative naval strength has unquestionably reached its maximum, a more powerful fleet than the protection of our insular existence demands. If the King possessed not one inch of territory overseas,
