Interest Relief.

If Denmark, Argentina, and other nations that have for years exported largely to Britain—without importing as largely from her—take the lesson to heart and “buy British,” and if the Empire units do the same, returning prosperity may bring a new grouping of trade factors. Commerce is so mobile that it might have proved dangerous had Ottawa made large cast iron decisions. As things are, Ottawa has given a modest start to a great experiment—one that needs continuous observation, and one that the Empire should enter with a pliant mind. With some Ottawa help in the matter of dairy produce, meat and apples, the Dominion marches on to the possibilities of very direct Budgetary help in the interest field. The chief stranglehold on the Budgets of borrowing countries, in a time of gold appreciation, is the rigidity of interest. A loan conversion, on the British 2,000 million model, would help to correct those paralysing changes which raised the goods equivalent of external debt burdens by 50 per cent.