CONSERVATIVE PARTY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 266, 7 October 1933, Page 2

CONSERVATIVE PARTY.

JAPANESE COMPETITION

THE DECREASING NAVY. Received October 6. 1.10 p.m. - LONDON, Oct. 5,

A proposal by Major H. A. Proctor. M.P., in favour of the prohibition of Japanese cotton and other goods into the Colonial Empire while the wage standard threatened the British labour standard was rejected by the Conservative Party Conference. Lord Plymouth, who admitted the seriousness of the Japanese competition, declared that an embargo would lead to a rupture. He was hopeful that the negotiations now proceeding would not plunge the nation into an economic war.

Lord Lloyd moved a resolution expressing grave anxiety at the inadequacy of the Imperial defence, declaring that the Navy had been shamefully reduced until its supremacy had gone and it could not defend the food supplies. Britain was only the fourth, and probably the fifth, Power in the air. If the Government allowed its security to decline there was a risk in the future that the Empire would not be entitled to be called national. It was useless and shameful to plead with President Roosevelt to cease shipbuilding, only to get snubbed. It was pure folly to continue to disarm when others did not follow. Mr AVinston Churchill remarked, that in the last few years the world had grown gravely darker. Britain must change her policy. Disarming could not continue, because while we were growing weaker others were growing stronger.

The motion was carried unanimously.