At last, at long last, the Bureaw of Commerce and Industry has issued a report, and this is num-bored 1922, though it is very obvious that it cannot cover this year of grace which even now hag some months to run. On more careful examination we find that it professes to carry on up to the end of June, 1922, and no further, Possibly your correspondent is prejudiced. He has times out of number remarked upon the fact that the China Trade Commissioner'y reports to Australia are man-handled and re-edited at this end. It is no breach of confidence now to say that Mr. E. S. Little, since his apnointment, has supplied no fewer than 13 bulletins. I need not enumerate them, but I am quite prepared to say that, at this end of the business, not one person in a thousand ever heard of them. Had they enlarged upon such pastimes as cricket, football or tennis, their popularity would have been immediate; as they only dealt with the "life-blood"—trade—of the nation there were few so mean as to admit even. a nodding acquaintance with the facts.
For purely political reasons the newspapers, and for purely business reasons the traders with the East, have objected to the Government taking any interest in Australia's export trade. They even objected to the Bureau of Oommerce and Industry on the grounds that it was a useless waste of money. Probably the Bureau itself {has not done much good. It certainly seems to have been hopelessily incompetent in the matter of giv-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.