ECONOMIC RECOVERY

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 86, 11 April 1935, Page 6

ECONOMIC RECOVERY

HOPEFUL SIGNS

"It appears to me," said Baron Emile B. D'Erlanger, at a London company meeting, "that the deep depression, natural consequence of the world-wide upheaval of 1914,' has not only reached its nadir, but that there are hopeful signs of a gradual rising Of the political and economic structure to a normal level. My whole economic upbringing and outlook would have led me to believe, especially in these days when modern inventions have done so much to annihilate space and time and to facilitate the intercourse of mankind and the exchange of goods, that the recovery of the world would have proceeded from intense personal intercourse between the peoples of this world and the gradual reduction of barriers interfering with trade. The very reverse process was, however, followed by all the nations of the world and forced the British Empire into the same path. I am absolutely convinced that if the broader world outlook had been taken by the great nations of the world, the crisis would never have reached the pitch that it did, and would have been of much shorter duration. But any rapid return to the intense intercourse of the peoples of this world and to the free exchange of goods is now not to be thought of. The economic reconstruction of the world is proceeding on other lines. The recovery is gradually taking place within the boundaries of nations or specific communities of nations. There is-so much leeway to be made up that no doubt, for a number of years, progress 13 possible within these respective boundaries, but boundaries imply limitation, and, at some given day, progress, if confined within barriers, will reach the point beyond which it cannot improve. In other words, there must be a saturation point in nationalistic home trade, and my hope lies in the thought that in the course of the gradual attainment of this point of saturation, the barriers may gradually be lowered by all. It is with deliberate intent that I have said lowered, and not swept away. We have to live in this world and not in Utopia, and for a very long period to come tariffs will be necessary looth from the budgetary point of view of nations and for the maintenance in each country of a reasonable, but progressive, standard of life. T see a very great difference between budgetary and protective tariffs and prohibitive tariffs which are the order of the day. As far as the United Kingdom is* concerned' the process of recovery within its own narrow boundaries and the wide boundaries of the British Empire has been patent to all eyes for some time. Owing to the very narrowness, of the national boundaries it may well be that it will be one of the first countries to attain the point of saturation, and it is, therefore, all the more consoling to think of the vast possibilities existing in the various units of the British Empire, and to note the rapid progress of these units in the process of recovery."