WHO CAUSED THE DEPRES-

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1938, Page 8

WHO CAUSED THE DEPRES-

SION?

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —It is rather disgusting to hear the member for Nelson and various Labour aspirants for office glibly telling the people that the great worldwide depression was caused by thethen New Zealand Government. Also one views with a great deal of doubt the assurances given by various half- J baked economists that they have the ability to insulate this country against another such depression. Eugene Lyons, the American Communist who went to Russia in 1928 and lived there for six years, in his book exposing the terrible conditions brought about in that country under the name of Socialism, has the following to say about the depression as it affected Russia—-"Assignment in Utopia," page 249:— "Practically, the depression hit Russia as hard as the rest of the world. Its foreign trade, an important element in the Five-Year Plan, was undermined. The prices of machinery it imported went down, but the prices on its exports sank much faster. Lack of 'valuta,' foreign capital, became the greatest stumbling-block on the road to industrialisation and internal inflation assumed disastrous proportions. But psychologically and politically, the depression haxl its uses. It gave the Kremlin new confidence. It evoked a cocky,, boastful, derisive attitude towards the outside world* which made Russia impervious to .foreign criticism and more smugly self-righteous than even in its ruthlessness."~l am, etc.. ANTI-SOCIALIST.