the Mother Country and goods from foreign countries, admitting the
former on favourable terms and penalising the latter. It is avowedly
against German competition that this policy is directed, and we are
light-heartedly told to risk our trade with one of our best customers on
the chance of encouraging trade with Colonies which so far have shown
much more eagerness to sell their goods to us than to buy ours. Even
supposing that this policy succeeded in destroying the whole of the
German export trade to our Colonies and Possessions, the possible gain
to us would be very small.

Here are the figures of the trade of our three principal Colonies with
the United Kingdom and with Germany, derived in each case from the
Colonial returns:--

TRADE OF THE FOLLOWING BRITISH POSSESSIONS WITH THE UNITED KINGDOM AND
WITH GERMANY.

Ten Years' Average, in Millions Sterling or Millions Rx.

-----------------+---------------------------+----------------------------
| IMPORTS. | EXPORTS.
+---------------+-----------+---------------+------------
| From Germany. | From U.K. | To Germany. | To U.K.
-----------------+---------------------------+----------------------------
India (Rx) | .9 | 58.4 | 3.8 | 36.4
Australasia | .9 | 27.4 | .7 | 28.2
Brit. N. America | .8 | 9.1 | .1 | 10.1
-----------------+---------------+-----------+---------------+------------

Thus these great groups of Colonies and Dependencies together buy rather
less than L3,000,000 worth of German goods against more than L60,000,000
worth of British goods. Yet in order to crush this fractional
competition of Germany in neutral markets, in order to scrape up these
crumbs that have fallen from our table, we are invited to risk the loss
of a direct trade with Germany worth nearly ten times as much as all the
crumbs heaped up together.

CHAPTER III.

PICTURESQUE EXAGGERATIONS.

It has now been shown, first that there is nothing in the general
figures of our import and export trade to warrant the alarmist view
expressed in "Made in Germany," and secondly, that the country whose
rivalry is supposed to be ruining us is one of the best of all our
customers. What I propose to do in the present chapter is to examine
some of the detailed statements in Mr. Williams's book and to show that
in man