"The Endless Adventure”

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 10 March 1934, Page 14

"The Endless Adventure”

Problem Of The New Citizenship'

Address By British Minister Of Agriculture

SPEAKING ort the “Endless Adventure of Government, and what it meant for us in _ ' our time,” Major Elliot said that govern-

ment to-day was passing through a great transformation, both at Home and abroad. Governments and States were no longer merely geographical or political units, but economic units which every kind of intercourse, industrial, agricultural, or commercial, had to take into consideration. One factor in particular was producing a change in outlook. Production was becoming decentralised, international trade became less and less an interchange of specialised lines of production and more and more a competition in similar lines. . The powers of modern science tended to .ensure that, given determination, it became more and 1 more feasible for the old specialised lines to be produced anywhere in the world, or to be replaced by others just as good. Thus the national unit became possible; he did not say desirable, but it did become possible. It was vital to grasp this. They had been told so often that the whole world was every day becoming more and more interdependent that they were apt to brush aside any examination of the points where that was not true. But there were many points where it was not true. Any parrotting of formulae would lead to disaster, since situations changed and formulae remained the same. The formula of the continually increasing interdependence of the world required qualification as much as any other. They had heard that formula so often that they would not believe there was another side to it unless he gave them examples. In the nineteenth century a great trade was built up with South America in a new and important commodity—nitrate for fertiliser. Steel rails went out and nitrate came back, import and export returns went up, large fortunes were made in financing loans to the countries abroad which produced the nitrate, international lending improved, and the economists were happier still. Meanwhile the scientists were at work —ignorant fellows who had never read the beautiful arguments about international trade. “Ail*,” they said, “is mostly nitrogen. There is thus a, column mainly of nitrogen between 4.0 and 60 miles in height balanced on every one of the fields to which this nitrate is being so laboriously carried.” “Do you really want nitrates?” they said to Europe. Europe: said: “Why, naturally.” The scientists said: “Do you mind if we get it at Home?” The agriculturists said in a low voice so as not to be overheard by the economists: “Not at all.” Meanwhile the loans floated and the ships sailed, till suddenly a scientist turned a switch, an electric are began to sizzle, and nitrate began to fall like snow out of the ail* on the very regions to which these ships were hurrying. That was good for production but bad for trade. Europe was henceforward selfcontained, if it desired, for nitrate fertilisers. This was brought about without either lowering the quality of the fertiliser—for nitrate was nitrate all the world over—or lowering the standard of living of those who used it. For it was cheaper .than ever. Other examples were the discovery of the neon light and of artificial plastics. There was yet another whole section of the world’s work, continued Major Elliot, where interdependence was no such certain sequence as it w r as once assumed to be. That was the

Special interest attaches to the rectorial address of Major W. E. Btoster of Agriculture, at the Aberdeen University, seeing that to some extent it reveals his mind upon economic policy. The address is summarised below.

section of foreign investment. It was important because a great deal of what was described as “trade” in the trade returns was not “exchange” but investment. Interdependence meant an investment and a return. Nobody could call a free gift “interdependence.” That free gift had had other important repercussions. A great proportion of it had gone to make transport systems, railway and steamer lines, which had been constructed at.' the expense of the producers in Britain and handed over as a free gift to their competitors. This free gift had masked the uneconomic nature of a great deal of foreign development. The Endless Adventure of Government had become the problem of problems, the real riddle of the sphinx. The reason for that was immediate fear—fear both of war and peace. Organisation was essential if they were to meet the uneasiness and insecurity of the present day. But organisation must choose some field within which to organise. The alternatives were to organise the whole world at once, or to organise smaller units and gear them up. to each other as soon as time and hard thinking would permit. Those of them who were working at that task now had to use both methods. The world was not quickly or easily organised. They must understand and work their national organisation of their groups of States. The States of the British Commonwealth of Nations had many economic problems in common. The need of some standing organisation to examine these problems had been repeatedly felt. Quite recently Mr S. M. Bruce, formerly Prime Minister of Australia, voiced the feeling that some men of. standing, the greatest available, should be drafted to work whole-time, and apart, at these formidable tasks. He said, and it was true, that this had become the more urgent and essential because of the emergence of British agriculture as one of the great and growing agricultures of the Empire. They should all agree with the desirability of that object, and, whether by Ministers of by othefs, he greatly hoped that it could be undertaken. But an organisation which held within itself the possibility of just such a development—the Empire Marketing’ Board—-had within the last few months been brought to an end. The failure of some of these attempts, the difficulties of others, did not exonerate them from the; necessity for making fresh trials. These new trials covered smaller areas. Let them try marketing boards to cover the United Kingdom if they could not get one to govern the world, if they could riot get one to span the Empire. Clearly the lesson of facts was that home development in agriculture, in industry, in employment, was essential and inevitable. They had to make certain that it did not mean the shutting down of intercourse oversea. But that would require thought and forbearance. It could not be done by haphazard nor by what was called, in a jargon phrase, “sweeping away the barriers.” In agriculture they were specially working at the line that half the world was now trying in one form or another—namely, that of selfgovernment in industry. In Britain especially they were trying to reconcile these two, which were yet one, the producers and the consumers, the industrial and the political aspects "of the nation, which could no more be separated than the front and the back of a man’s head. It was the problem of the new citizenship.