WORLD UNREST

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 56, 8 March 1937, Page 8

WORLD UNREST

ECONOMIC PROBLEM

FACTS THAT MUST BE FACED

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, February 10.

"The British Empire is the supremeexample of courageous experimentation. Never before in the history of the world has there been an Empire consisting of a number of independent Sovereign States without any central super-imposed Federal Government," said Sir Stephen Demetriadi, president of the London Chamber: of Commerce, in a recent address at Bradford.

"The French economist, Monsieur Andre Siegfried, once. said that the British Empire was incomprehensible to the Continental mind because its Government was. nowhere but yet everywhere. At the same time, it was a living organism. No doubt, in fifty years it would be a different shape, but he saw no reason why it should ever come to an end. I think it is generally recognised that if there were a Central Super-imposed Government of the' Empire-it would very speedily create fear and suspicion, and intrigue to capture and to control it. "If this be true of the nations composing the British Empire, then the principle must inevitably have even greater validity in the relationship of nations not bound together by ties of blood and of loyalty to a common Sovereign. It may Tae that the British Empire is a living demonstration of a fundamental principle of vital importance to the world at large, that principle being that any super national, force must always produce fear, suspicion, and intrigue to capture it, and that only in its absence will fear be removed and nations voluntarily be prepared to co-operate. HON W. NASH QUOTED. "It is obvious that there can be no prosperity to the British Empire, and no future agreeable to contemplate for any of us, unless the unrest, everywhere apparent today, can be allayed. It is being increasingly recognised that that unrest is, at bottom, due to economic causes, and it is therefore a matter with which we, as business men, are intimately and profoundly concerned. "The New Zealand Minister of Finance, Mr. Walter Nash, has pointed out that the same number of men employed on the land in New Zealand were, owing to technical improvements, producing twice as much foodstuffs as they were a few years ago. If then, he says, their export markets for foodstuffs were to be" reduced.or even restricted to their present size, fewer men wquld progressively find employment on the land. Next, if we in Great Britain were to object to New Zealand developing her secondary.! industries on the ground that that was economic nationalism, and that we could supply the manufactured goods which she needed better ,and cheaper than she could herself, then not only must she employ fewer men on the land, but she must also employ fewer men in industry. "Mr. Nash mentioned that in New Zealand the consumption of meat and of butter per head was nearly double that in England. In other countries the consumption was lower still. The solution, in his view, lay in enabling those who could, and should, eat more food, to do so, this in its turn enabling the New Zealand producer with the proceeds of his sales, to acquire and to enjoy more manufactured goods. ROOSEVELT'S ATTITUDE. "Mr. Iloosevelt, the President of the United States of America, in his inaugural address, put the problem in a nutshell when he said: 'I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory, and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.' I'The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.' "Whichever way you look at the problem confronting the world today, you will find that it is an economic one: a problem for the business man. It is not a problem of production; it is a problem of distribution! When it is 'solved, then will a new age have opened—an age of good will between men and between nations—but, so long as we refuse to face it, so long have we no right to claim or to expect peace on earth."

Mr. G. H. Loney, Government Printer, who -has been visiting the South Island, returned to Wellington yesterday.