BELIEF IN OURSELVES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 221, 18 August 1932, Page 8

BELIEF IN OURSELVES.

(Contributed by N.Z. Welfare League.) 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 everybody else except foreigners, and possihlv 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 and colonisation- —building upon solid foundations. Net because we have, with the rest of the world, to face a temporary depression when things are difficult and problems have to lie solved, we find a growing number ol British born people saying that we are all ot a sudden going "phut that the British race has only one hope of salvation. namely to copy some foreign experiment such as that being tried in Russia. ’I he idea is too ridiculous were it not being busily urged 1)v interested propagandists. Do these advocates for imitating Russia seriously argue that three years depression. and the problems arising from it, are beyond solution by our race which lias overcome more dilficult problems again and again during the past, centuries S' Stalin 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 —lie is admittedly trying to reach the level of more advanced countries. yet we are told by some ol our pro-Russian 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 his solved past problems so it will l>e aide to solve present ones, without having to suddenly look to foreigners for a lead.