Oslo and Free Trade The efforts of the Oslo Powers
continue to shine like good deeds in a naughty world. Last week it was announced that the Netherlands Government had decided to extend to Great Britain and Germany the concessions given to Finland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Norway, Denmark and Sweden under the Convention signed at The Hague on May 28th; the concessions include the abolition of quotas on 65 com- modities in the tariff list. The decision is practical proof of the sincerity with which the Oslo Powers are carrying out their policy, not of securing economic advantages to themselves or of creating a closer economic bloc, but of gradually breaking down barriers to international trade. At Geneva this week the League of Nations Economic Committee, which is examining the effect on barriers to trade, expressed its approval of the Oslo policy and its hope that it would secure a response from other countries. Indeed the efforts of these States have secured almost universal approbation ; no country has approved more than Great Britain and no Government has done less in practice to encourage them. It has adopted precisely the same atti- tude to the gesture with which, last September, France reduced tariffs and increased quotas ; and in Paris this week the French Minister of Commerce delivered a plain hint that without some such response the French Government, against its will, would be forced again into the paths of economic nationalism.
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