IMPERIAL ECONOMIC CONFERENCE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 31, 6 August 1923, Page 2

IMPERIAL ECONOMIC CONFERENCE

TO THE EDITOR. Sir.—ln the coming Conference the Imperial representatives will be faced with the two-fold problem of the mutual exchange of Imperial produce and the transfer of a number of "people of the Old Country into the outlying parts of the Empire with the iiievr to the development of these parts in the Imperial interest. Involved in this problem is also the question of the lending by the Old Country of the goods or commodities (i.e., capital) the outlying parts of the Empire need to import for this new development.

This problem includes of necessity innumerable detail adjustments, a great majority of which will be outside the knowledge of the members of the Conference and of the pratcical experts they will have with them. It is impossible therefore, that the Conference can devise a useful programme of Imperial enterprise. All it can usefully do is to agree upon an Imperial economic policy to which the practical experts of the Empire can adjust their individual • enterprises.

May I suggest for the consideration of your leaders that the time has come when we should seriously face the question, whether it is possible for the wit of man to devise a useful national or Imperial policy? This question occurred to me nine years ago, and most of my time since, has been spent in reflecting upon the operation of life as I have seen it in work and pleasure, with the view to defining the process by which men succeed in anything they do. The result has been that I have not been able to find in my experience or in books any evidence at all of a single instance in which any creature has devised the policy or process by which it has succeeded in doing anything whatever. In every instance of success of any kind I have examined that success has come through the, process of observing what could be usefully done in accordance with, the order of nature and conforming with that order. I found also, that in my experience this national order lias been governed absolutely by a perfectly simple rule or law that every child may understandThis rule is that the only source and measure of power (physical, moral, mental, and spiritual) available to us in the degree in which the parts of a natural body (or association of bodies) of any kind unite in harmony or unity of spirit with the other parts in a common objective.

If what I have seen is true, the reason why all Empires in the past have failed is that they have sought to devise a human policy or process of government, instead of conforming to the natural order and its governing law.

I would suggest that • there has for some time past been coming to those in New Zealand who have the practical adjustment of our economic enterprise a feeling that there is spine dominating control in nature to which we must conform if we would have success. This may be soon particularly in two movements which have different functions in a common aim. I refer to the Welfare League and the Taxpayers' League. The aim of the former, as I understand it, is to bring our people together in the common objoctivo of the preservation and development of the organisation of nature, we have built up in this Dominion. The Taxpayers' League's immediate function is to resist the modern tendency of Parliament to frame a policy of government, suggested by public clamour, and strive for freedom to adopt that policy which is found in the natural order of things to be most productive. I gather, however, that the promoters of this league realise thatthis freedom cannot be safely givori to the leaders of' enterprise unless they come together and direct its diffrent parts in the common objective of the national interest.

Following these movements we have a recent address by Bishop Sprott, to which you gave full publicity in your columns. He said, in effect, that in the league realise that this freedom cannot be thought we were led tv expect the coming of the Kingdom in this life, and his view is supported by the words "Thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven." It is obvious that if there is a defined order in nature governed by the law I have described, then nature is a kingdom. Also if you realise 'the existence of this order, and this law that kingdom has plainly "come" to you in a real .sense. It is "within, you," and you. are at once faced with the need of electing to be a lpyal subject or a rebel.

I would urge that the presence of this kingdom in our midst is a matter worthy of authoritative investigation immediately. The test could very easily be applied before the sitting of the Imperial Conference. It is obviously a simple matter to ascertain whether within our knowledge all production and happiness have been secured only in proportion as the above rule has been complied with, and all waste -and misery from non compliance: For one instance to the contrary disproves it.

If satisfactory evidence of a natural order, such as I suggest, could be secured, we would have found the true basis of notional, Imperial, and international association ; and the essential function of the Imperial Conference would be to bring the different parts of the Empire into the acceptance of this basis both Imperially and internationally, leaving the detail adjustment to individual initiative under the influence of such movements as our Welfare and Taxpayers' Leagues with the aid of the Churches.—-I am, etc.,

F. G. DALZIELL.