The Manawatu Daily Times Selfish National Interests

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7250, 1 September 1933, Page 6

The Manawatu Daily Times Selfish National Interests

Speaking at tlie annual convention of the British Advertising Association, Mr. Stanley Bruce, Australian Minister in London, said the Economic Conference started with the idea that it might be possible to bring about some international understanding to remove the clogs on industry to-day. But so far it had really achieved nothing, and it appeared to him that the idea of a great international understanding being brought about immediately was impossible of realisation, because at the moment there was a lack of understanding of its necessity, and one was always up against the selfish national interest of individual peoples. That barrier had to be broken down, but it would take time. He thought the immediate solution was that they would have to have national arrangements, expanded into bilateral arrangements where complementary production was suitable to individual national needs. Nowhere was that more possible than inside the group of nations known as the British Empire. They might hope that such arrangements might break down trade barriers, and that there might then be a chance of coming back to the point of a great international understanding. Economic Groups

Mr. L. S. Amery in a recent speech said that the attempted return to the gold standard had been bound to break down unless the United States had remitted its debts; brushed away its tariff, and been prepared in addition to invest handsomely in the world outside and to spend large sums in foreign travel. It did the last, and for some years the gold standard continued, but the moment the United States stopped investing in foreign travel the gold standard crashed. They had to accept the fact that economic nationalism had come to stay and was destined ever increasingly to cover the field of all forms of production and of economic activity. At the same time, the technical development of world economics made impossible the small selfcontained unit living in one part of the world. The solution seemed to lie in the grouping together of those who had a desire to co-operate so as to provide a minimum market for efficient mass production and including within the group tropical as well as temperate agriculture and most of the essential minerals, and capable of the largest variety of industrial production. To contrast the achievements of the Ottawa Conference with the failure of the World Conference formed another argument for the belief that to bring success out of a conference one had to limit the field to those who had already a strong predisposition to work with one another. He believed the most important step they had now to take was the establishment of a sterling area at a reasonable price level for the Empire and for those other countries which desired to unite in such a policy.