BRITAIN’S DEBT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 95, 5 April 1934, Page 5

BRITAIN’S DEBT

AMERICAN ATTITUDE Mr. Bernard Shaw’s Views GOLD AND GOODS QUESTION (By Telegraph-Press Associailon.) BLENHEIM, April 5. Commenting in an interview on the cabled reference (appearing on page 7) to American reaction as regards the war-debt problem to Britain’s huge budgetary surplus, Mr. Bernard Shaw to-day remarked that after all a surplus of thirty odd million was more or less inconsiderable compared with the millions we owed America. "If we offer to pay by the only means we have—the things we produce—the Americans would say, ‘No, you shan’t do that,’ and promptly raise up tariffs against our exportable goods," Mr. Shaw said. "Really we might just keep on offering to pay that way. If we offer, say, to buy gold from New Zealand to pay America in gold we come up against a double refusal, because America doesn’t want gold particularly and New Zealand doesn’t want the goods England produces and with which she would buy the gold. At the present time you can’t raise money.

"If you want to raise thousands of millions you can only do it by undertaking not to pay it back before a certain date, and the longer that period the better. You see, the capitalistic system stands everything on its head."

Asked what he would do if given the opportunity to spend the British surplus, Mr. Shaw replied with the question: "Will it be used to make things easier for the workers!” Answering it himself, he said, "No, they will want it knocked off the income tax."

Asked how New Zealand should raise any capital requirements for the future, he said: "Save it yourselves. That’s the way to do it.” If he investigated the position of many apparently independent New Zealand farmers he would probably find they were working 16 hours a day for some ogre of a mortgagee, in which case the farmer would be better off if he were a real black slave, because his protector would not be allowed to let him starve.