Our principal concern, however, for the moment, is how to improve the position of British trade in the East—principally in China, It is unfortunate that there are no reliable statistics as to the value of German trade with China, The Customs returns give certain figures, but they are far from satisfactory 88 a guide for our present pur-Poses. The returns for 1913 give the total of German trade with China at Hk. Tis, 45,397,627—Tls, 28,302,403 imports from Germany and Tle. 17, exports to Germany. But this is certainly not the total of German trade. There isno doubt that a portion of the ex-porte from and importa to Hongkong is German trade,—although the larger portion of the volume of Hongkong's trade is assuredly British. The Belgian trade comes to s total of Tle 39,377,238; but as is well known, the commerce of Antwerp has been principally German for some time past; thus it is not far wrong to state that a major portion of the Belgian trade total is German. Although not to the same extent, the Dutch trade, to the total of Ta 10,116,389, is, at least, partly German. Further, of course, it is well known that many articles of German manufacture have been systematically sent to Grea Britain for finishing, and sent out as British goods—especially in piece goods; in the same manner, several articles of British manufacture—as for instance, cameras, have been sent to Germany to be finished and sent out to China as German therefore, very difficult to apportion the exact amount of the volume of German trade with China,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.