"HATS OFF TO 1931"

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3443, 15 March 1932, Page 3

"HATS OFF TO 1931"

AN HISTORIC YEAR. London, January 21. Mr. Francis Deverell, manager of the New Zealand Refrigerating Compand in London, has the Imperial outlook, and from time to time expresses his views in the correspondence columns of the daily papers. Writing to the Morning Post, he says: Hats off to 1931! The widespread abuse which has been flung at the departed year is, I submit, not only ungenerous, but short-sighted and unwise.

I predict that in less than 20 years leading articles in our press will pay homage to 1931 as having been more fruitful of good to the British Empire and to the rest of the world than any preceding year in our history. For the perspective of time will show that 1931 and its physical troubles and economic disasters bludgeoned our people out of their semi-comatose condition —awakened the national and banished the party spirit, and shamed into silence the half-wits who had no Empire vision. Time will show that the adversities of 1931 led directly to the welding together of all parts of the Empire, and historians of 100 years ago or so hence will fix on 1931 as the year in which the seeds of our great destiny were sown. A year, moreover, wliich proved that the first essential step towards the ideal of Empire economic union and freer international trade was that the United Kingdom should discard the policy of free imports. Nineteen hundred and thirty-one taught all so-called civilised Powers that war is a barbaric stupidity, that to win a war was just as ruinous as to lose a war, and that the impossibility of collecting war debts and reparations without hurting the receiver has done more for the cause of peace than 100 peace conferences. The inscrutable Power which, through its unalterable law of cause and effect, rewards or punishes individuals and nations alike, has during 1931 given all the squabbling and greedy children in the nursery a thoroughly good spanking, in the hope that the tender parts will be a painful reminder that better behaviour will lead to greater happiness in the future.

If the world learns these lessons surely the past year has more than justified itself? I, therefore, repeat: Hats off to 1931!