The Sun TUESDAY', JUNE 2, 1914. THE LOST POLICY OF SELF-RELIANCE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 99, 2 June 1914, Page 6

The Sun TUESDAY', JUNE 2, 1914. THE LOST POLICY OF SELF-RELIANCE.

Mr Arthur Myers and the Hon. 3>. F. Denham, Premier of" Queensland, have both come back from England with hopeful views of the monetary outlook. There is no question that under normal conditions the accumulation of surplus wealth in England is phenomenal. It has been ; variously estimated at between £300,000,000 and £400,000,000 annually, and investment in some form or other requires to be found for all this money, The various dominions are amongst the principal applicants, aild the readiness of the British investor to accommodate therii is't&e. chief explanation of a public debt in New Zealand amounting to about ninety millions, costing us nearly three millions a year in interest. Australia has been an equally large borrower, in proportion, and she now owes some £294,000,000, involving an interest, bill of about £10,500,000 per annum. The bulk of this vast sum has, of course, been sunk in development works of. a more or less re-' productive and the growth of wealth in Australia and New Zealand has been sufficiently rapid to make the burden of debt, quite bearable. One heays very little in these- days of any suggestion that a self-reliant policy would be a better and safer one to adopt. Finance Ministers spend half their time in going to and fro between the dominions and London arranging for the redemption and renewal of loans and negotiating fresh ones. As. long as the lender is willing to do business, he is always sure of plenty of colonial clients. Yet the continuous loan policy has its perils to-day, just as it did many years ago, when New Zealand was taught such a lesson,-that her public men swore off borrowing with the fervour of a penitent toper taking the pledge after a drinking bout. .The chief fruits of the loan policy in New Zealand are found in a. larger agricultural population, closer settlement, dearer land, and a huge export of wool, frozen meat, and other produce. Prices continue good, and the. returns from the business of feeding the people of England with our foodstuffs and clothing them with our wool keep the Dominion solvent, and encourage the British investor to lend us as much :tnore as we can profitably utilise. The scheme works Very and will continue to do so until something happens to interrupt it. Anything that %ou!d restrict or prevent the landing' of all our surplus produce on the London market, or diminish the purchasing power of the British consumer, would bring the who le fabric of the Dominion's solvency down with a crash. For all practical purposes there is only one contingency that need be feared in this connection:: it is a European war, and the economic depression that would inevitably follow it. This contingency may; be remote, and we do not suggest it is otherwise, but that does not alter the fact that our fiscal policy is shaped, and our public finance to-day is managed as if such a contingency were out of the question altogether. Which is far from being sound statesmanship. War came terribly close in 1911, and is sure to break out some day in the ordinary course of events.y If it comes at a time when we axe as dependent on foreign consumers of produce as we are at present, then the Dominion will be hit very hard. The wiser course would be to pay more attention to the development of other resources besides the land. There should be far greater industrial development than there is at present, so as to create a local market for the produce that now goes abroad. The foodstuffs and raw material exported would support and clothe a very large manufacturing population, and if New Zealand were self-contained it would be protected to a great extent from economic disasters that are now liable to occur from circumstances completely beyond her control.