War Debt Relief for the Dominions.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20273, 26 June 1931, Page 10

War Debt Relief for the Dominions.

Xew Zealaiyl's response to-the British Government's offer to the Dominions and India to forgo £11,000,000 of their war debt payments for a year should he prompt and grateful, and the gratitude is duetto the British taxpayer, who in the cost of victory and defeat is bearing a heavier burden than any of the twenty-eight nations involved in the World War. His credit is the greater, since he neither boasts of his efforts, nor if he grumbles at the burden, utters any protest against debtors largely excused of- their debt and still in arrears. A great deal of praise has been given and fairly belongs to the United States Government for its bold and generous proposal, but Americans, after all, with more than a dollar of gold in their nation's coffers for every paper dollar in circulation, are paying only £6 la lid s head in taxation. -Although Germany clamours to be saved from falling over a financial precipice, taxation is not more than £5 6s 5d a head; French taxation per caput is less than £9; and in Italy, where .Mussolini to-day announces his intention of • rehearsing for America's benefit the extent of the f notable Italian sacrifices" made in accepting Mr Hoover's offer, taxes , amount to no more than £3 8a 9d a bead. The British rate is £ls 2s Bd. Australia is next with £l2 19s 9d, New Zealand third highest in the world with £l2 7s lid, and about to jostle the Commonwealth for priority. It is true, of course, that while the per caput taxation in Great Britain and. all the Dominions is higher ;,than in any other of the former belligerent nations, this cannot be attributed wholly to the conflict. Australia, for example, owes much of her economic misery to-day to a protracted, carnival of political extravagance , and to stupid industrial and fiscal policy. New Zealand has also her own follie9, great enough, to thank; but all the more because the penalty is being heavily paid now, a year's respite from i the liquidation of war debt will be welcome. So far the Government has not been able to calculate the extent of the Dominion's benefit. Though the Prime Minister first said a few days ago that the suspension of German reparations would just about balance the temporary saving in New Zealand's war debt payment to Great Britain, a day later he was not so,sure about it. Meanwhile, the people of the Dominion will think less of the precise figure than of the character of the British Government's act, and will feel that the cheers oft the House of Commons anticipated their own response.

more and more markedly audiences of old people. When Mr Levitzki plays it constantly disturbs him to see " so " many old faces, and so few new." But perhaps it is possible to economise a little in alarm by seeing only one cause for it instead of two, since, if the appreciation of music is in its decline, tho want of new rather than the cooling of old lovers must bo the proof of it. Tho concert chamber is still not deserted, nor are those who attend it frigid, rude, or tasteless listeners. At least, it is difficult (and would be lamentable) to think that Mr Levitzki meant to'suggest this, when he is able to report the extraordinary success of Paderewski's recent tour of America and has encouraging recollections of his own. The musician who makes his bow to middle and old ag« does not have to wonder what he is doing in such company, and why it has sought his; he wonders only whether he has before him the last, obstinate loyalists of the transition between the sunset of music and the night of noise. Youth is detained by other engagements, and as r/.elancholy as Byron and Gray togc/her he thinks of the young barbarians all at play and counting ignorance as bliss. Yet it would be more comforting and not so very unreasonable to dwell 011 the vitality of a cause which, while it is failing, can gather crowded audiences of grown and graying men and women to make triumphs- of musicians' tours. Once the young helped the old to fill the concert halls; now the old go alone, and that is the worst that can be said. It is fortunate that they are so many; and is there not a trace of hope in the fact that they are unlikely to become fewer? The young (though they are disinclined to believe it) are constantly recruiting the ranks of their absurd, stuffy seniors and becoming oddly like them, settling with an ease and satisfaction astqnisliing to themselves into the old solaces of the old. And music, like reading, is one of them, perhaps the deepest of all, as Mr Galsworthy knew when he filled with music the Indian Summer of a Forsyte, and as the long lifo of Lord Balfour declared, with "music at the close." The truth of this is deeper and more persistent than any of those changes ;n the demands of life and in the demands made upon it which keep the young 1 away from recitals of music. There are many such changes; and it would be surprising if their effect were, not much as Mr Levitzki describes it. But that this means that youth is growing up insensitive to anything better than incredible dumb-show and noise need not be believed till it must be, and that is not yet. Youth may still go to concerts, though, extending a venerable tradition, it may arrive late.