PUBLICDEBTS-A COMPARISON

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1153, 14 June 1911, Page 6

PUBLICDEBTS-A COMPARISON

Soue figures relating to the Japanese National Debt, which are given in a recent issue of the Economist, have several points of interest to people at this end of the world. The growth of the debt during the ten years has been remarkable, and 'is strikingly illustrative of the enormous drain on her material resources entailed by her struggle for dominance in the Far East. The fact that her debt has increased by over £216,000,000 in ten years, when considered together with the poverty of her people, the high taxation, and the high cost of living, should persuade the most nervous sufferer from bad dreams about the "Yellow Peril" that Japan has, to put it very moderately, at any rate a good deal of work to do in her own house before she can dream of aggressive expansion The following table shows the debt at the end of March in each year: ''

Total debt Tear. £ 1900 50,300,000 1901 50,850,000 1902 52,420,000 1903 55,220,000 1901 5G,1C0,000 1905 99.130,000 190G , 187,240,000 1907 221,770,000 1908 227,030,000 1909 225,030,000 1910 206,130,000 Tremendously rapid as the growth has been, the debt per head is now only between £5 and £o 10s. (since the population was over 49,000,000 in 1908)— or only about one-fifteenth as much as the debt per head in New Zealand. The continued increase in Japan's indebtedness since the close of the war is due to the increased naval and military charges and to the policy of railways nationalisation, which latter accounted in 1909 for £51,800,000 of the total liability. Despite this entirely abnormal strain upon her finances, Japan has in the ten years increased her debt by a little over £-1 per head and become a worldPower. In the same ten years New Zealand, enjoying undisturbed peace and enormous prosperity, has increased her indebtedness by no less a sum than £17 per head (from £03 odd to £80 odd).

If Japan lmd not had to pay for a war, and had been run on the lines of Seddon-Waud finance, and had increased her_ debt by £17 per head, her liability would have amounted at the present time to £900,000,000, or more than £600,000,000 above what it actually is. If her debt were £80 per head, it would be four thousand millions sterling. Figures like these have a bearing that the Ministerial apologists in this country cannot explain away. The Economist, also gives particulars of the way in _ which Japan goes about the conversion and redemption of loans. A sinking fund scheme was perfected in the

year 1906-7, but it was not I a bogus arrangement like I that of our own Governiment, whose plan simply amounts to putting away in the vest pocket the I twopenny-ha'penny sum that used to 03 put in the stocking, on the theory that this shabby and foolish trick will pay off the debt long after we are all dead and gone and forgotten. I lie Japanese plan is the perfectly simple one of paying off not less than £5,000,000 a year of the general debt exclusive of the railway debt. • In two years £10,000,000 of the general debt was extinguished, and £8,250,000 was to bo paid off during the past financial year, £0,080,000 of this sum being provided out of the actual revenue of the year. The whole general debt will have been paid off in 20 years. AVliat a contrast is here! Japan, intrinsically poor, but saddled by her ambitions with a great debt, aims straight for a stringent fight for solvency. Nsw Zealand, comparatively unburdened by any national obligation, safe in the protecting arms of Britain, can do nothing under the Ward regime but place her future even deeper in pawn, and follow up a silly little pretence of a sinking fund by gaily raising a fresh loan which, per head, is without parallel in present-day finance. What chance would the \VAnn Administration have at the coming general election if every elector with a stake in the country was made aware of these facts and realised what they mean to him ?