NOT POLITIC

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 134, 4 December 1930, Page 10

NOT POLITIC

SIR li. BEAUCHAMP'S VIEW

"I am distinctly in agreement with those who think it would be unwise and impolitic to talk of a moratorium at the present time," said Sir Harold Beauchamp, when interviewed by a "Post" reporter to-day. "I hold that after the signing of the Armistice it would have been greatly in the interests of the Dominion if the moratorium had then been lifted instead of extended. At that time, the farmers as a whole wove in a condition of financial ease through the high prices realised under the commandeer of our produce, and they would then have been able to discharge, or largely reduce, (heir financial obligations, instead of which they applied their available funds to tuei gurehasq p£ high-

price lands, the result of which has been so disastrous to the farming community as a whole. "In the present ease, I may point out that although many farmers are unable to pay interest on their mortgages, they are being treated with the utmost leniency and consideration by mortgagees as a whole. I am connected with several financial institutions which recognise that it would be most unwise to attempt to call up advances and force farmers to walk off their lands. The policy, therefore, of these financial institutions is to say to the various obligants, 'Carry on, and Ao tho best you can till financial conditions improve.' "In addition, the declaration of a moratorium would, in my opinion, have a most deleterious effect upon our credit in the eyes of the outside world. To-day, in the London market, we oeci y a very high position, and if it wore proclaimed that financial obligations on the. part of the farmers as a whole could not be discharged, London investors would, I think, be most chary in subscribing for any loans which we might place on the market. "Furthermore, people in this country would look most askance on applications for money to be advanced on land, and it would" be only a question of time, I think, when we should find the State the sole mortgagee in this Dominion. That is a position none of us would care to see."