aay a cH a Ee. 
21 
we draw more and more our materials from within the British 
Empire we shall be creating mutual trade with this country 
in return. We know that in the development of the British 
Empire alone lies the opportunity for hundreds of thousands 
of the men, women and children of this country. lt is those 
aspects of a common problem that we are working in the 
Conference to achieve —to achieve them by preference—and 
there is not a man in this room who would not be ready to bear 
testimony to the value which the preference the Dominions 
have accorded has been to the trade and industry of this 
country. This country will not be slow to follow the lead 
which the Dominions have given us—to develop them 
by financial co-operation, and to take all the necessary 
and practical steps which must be taken if trade is to be 
developed along smooth and clear lines. All those things 
we are - working for, and we are working in the spirit 
and the knowledge that what benefits one part of the Empire 
benefits the whole of the Empire. That, I venture to say, is 
imperial unity in practice. We are working at this problem 
with the help of great men. I am sure I speak the view of 
every British Minister who sits at the Conference table to-day 
when I say that never could they have hoped to sit round 
a Conference table with men of more earnest purpose and men 
of better capacity for the work which they have taken in 
hand than our colleagues from overseas. (Cheers.) I am 
going to couple this Toast with the name of one of them, 
Mr. Massey is still in his prime, so I must not yet call him 
the grand old man of the Empire. (Cheers.) In a decade or 
two he will certainly have earned that title. (Laughter.) 
But I will call him what I think of him, “a grand old friend.” 
The millions in the Empire who know him, know his character, 
his career and his great services to the Empire, and it affords 
me the utmost pleasure to couple the Toast with his name. 
(Cheers.) 
The Toast was most enthusiastically honoured. 
The Rt. Hon. W. F. Massey, M.P. (Prime Minister of 
New Zealand), who was received with loud and prolonged 
applause on rising to respond, said: I am sorry that the 
gentlemen who were to have responded to this Toast are not 
present to-night, but I will do my best to take the place that 
was assigned to them. Before doing so, let me express the 
pleasure I feel in having the opportunity of addressing so 
many representative men from different parts of the United 
Kingdom, men who are representative of commercial and 
financial interests. It reminds me of a prediction I heard 
during the war to the effect that never again would London be 
the financial centre of the Empire or the financial centre of 
BE GE