BELIEF IN OURSELVES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 13 August 1932, Page 11

BELIEF IN OURSELVES

TO COMBAT PROPAGANDA (Contributed bv the N.Z. Welfare League). While the great majority of the community in the Dominion is silently plugeinf' along against the depression and saying very little there is a noisy minority whose actions and opinions seem to indicate that they have lost ill belief in themselves, and in evei body else except foreigners and possibly 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 up- on solid foundations Yet because we have, with the rest of the world, to face a temporary depression when things are difficult and problems have to be solved, we find a growing number of British born people saying that wo are all of 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. The idea is too ridiculous,were it not being busily urged by interested propagandists. Do these advocates for imitating Russia seriously argue that three years depression, and the problems rising from it are beyond solution by our race which has overcome more difficult problems again and again during the past centuries? 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 —he is admittedly trying to reach the level of more advanced countries, yet we are told by some of 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, )■ cowing that as our race has solved past problems so it will be able to sol.e present ones, without having to suddenly look to foreigners for a load.