The Northern Advocate Daily “NORTHLAND FIRST” THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1939. Business And War

Northern Advocate, 7 September 1939, Page 4

The Northern Advocate Daily “NORTHLAND FIRST”

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1939. Business And War

I Registered for transmission through the post as a Newspaper ;

-T is inevitable that the war, temporarily at least, should have a J disturbing effect on business, but those who needlessly curtail 1 their operations are doing both themselves and the country a disservice. There is no call for panic about the future of business and commerce, or even for undue worry, for the lesson taught by the last war is that whatever unpleasantnesses it occasioned —and there were many—business stagnation was not among them. After the first shock, business began to recover, and soon was positively booming. Wartime urgencies brook no arguments, and therefore money can always be found in abundance for war purposes. How this is done is one of those secrets of high finance which the mere layman cannot hope to fathom. It always seems perplexing that though in a depression there may be an acute scarcity of money and no one can do anything about it, in wartime the provision of credits amounting to £500,000,000 (as occurred in England the other day), is almost a matter of routine. This vast war expenditure filters out into distant channels, and no doubt some of it will come to New Zealand, as the maintenance of huge armies will increase the demand for wool and foodstuffs. Even in New Zealand there must be increased internal expenditure, which no one dare challenge, for while the propriety or wisdom of spending large sums on public works may be debated, expenditure of even larger sums for war purposes has to be accepted as vital to our national security. It is a melancholy thought that this should be so, for such expenditure is to a great extent unreproductive, and may bring in its train acute post-war 'economic problems. Those difficulties, however, are for the future, and possibly economists and statesmen may yet devise some means of avoiding them.