BELIEF IN OURSELVES.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 205, 13 August 1932, Page 11

BELIEF IN OURSELVES.

(To the Editor). Sir, —While the great majority of the community in the Dominion is silently plugging along against the depression and saying very little, there is a noisy minority whose actions and opinions seem to indicate that they have lost all belief in themselves, and in every body else except foreigners, and possibly that milch cow the State. No one can reasonably deny that the British race has shown ability in the manner in Which it has taken the lead in finance, industry, commerce ano colonisation—building up on solid foundations. Yet because we have, with the rest of the world, to face a tern porary depression when things are difficult and problems have to be solved, we find a growing number of Britishborn people saying that we are all of a sudden going “phut”—that the Brit ish race has only one hope of salvation, namely to copy some foreign experiment Sueh as that being tried in Russia. The idea is too ridiculous were it not being busily urged by interested propagandists. Do these advocates for imitating Russia Seriously argue th-v ttnee years depression, and the prob Icms rising from it are beyond solution by cur race which has overcome more difficult problems again and again during the past centuries? Ktalin himself not long ago said of Russia: “We are from 50 to 100 years behind advanced countries; we must cover that in 10 years.” We take it that he knows what he is talking about —Ho is admittedly trying to reach the level of more advanced countries, yet we are told by some of our pro-Russiau advocates that to progress ourselves we must adopt the methods of a country admittedly 50 years less advanced. One of the surest ways to solve our problems is to regain belief in ourselves, knowing that as our race has solved past proolems so it will be able to solve present ones, without having to look suddenly to foreigners for a load.—Yours, etc., THE N.Z, WELFARE LEAGUE. Wellington, 10/8/32.