"WORLD IS BANKRUPT."

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 1, 2 January 1934, Page 7

"WORLD IS BANKRUPT."

Leader Issues Plea for World Co-operation. RECEIVERSHIP ALTERNATIVE. NEW YORK, January 1. Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, as president of the Carnegie endowment for international peace, issued a New Year's statement to-day. He said the world was bankrupt, and "lacks the courage to face that fact, and put, itself into the hands of a receivership." The world, said Dr. Butler, through governments, banks, business enterprises and corporations and individuals, had borrowed 300,000,000,000 dollars, the greatest part of which was in payable gold, but less than 12,000,000,000 dollars in gold was available, and that was "chiefly gathered in two centres." Dr. Butler said the whole supply of monetary gold should be placed in the Bank of International Settlements, and used only "on the books of the bank m settlement of international balances by the authority of the several Governments." He decried the trend towards economic nationalism. "The world's troubles are international in origin and extent, and cannot be cured with any completeness or permanence save through international understanding and co-operation," he said, and concluded that there was no spirit of war in the Western world, not even in Germany. The war talk was all emanating from the military and naval lobbies and the armament interests.