Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 1933 THE GENERAL OUTLOOK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 21 August 1933, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 1933 THE GENERAL OUTLOOK

A GENERAL survey seems to show that, if the civilised nations of the world are not much better' in an economic sense than they were, at least they are no worse. In Great Britain, indeed, as today’s news shows, there is accumulating evidence of definite trade recovery. The United States are in the throes of President Roosevelt’s economic and financial experiments. No one can say what the result wili be. The fundamental weakness of the States’ economic life seems to rest in their endeavour to sell to all the nations of the world, while buying from none. This false commercial principle, coupled with their refusal to join with the European nations in an endeavour to stabilise national currencies, retards the States’ economic recovery, and prevents the monetary and mercantile prosperity of other civilised nations, especially those of tlie European Continent which have created high tariff barriers in the hope of collecting revenue, with which to meet the high rate of national expense, which lias greatly increased since and because of the Great War.

But on the whole the turbulent Continent is more tranquil than it was. There seems to be a better feeling between Italy and France, whose racial affinity and similarity of political interests should naturally draw them together, the more especially because when they look towards central and eastern Europe they cannot but observe that they share the danger which turmoil in those quarters would create. That danger is centred in the condition of Russia and Germany. Tlie former is still in the midst of those curious experiments of the Five-Years Plan, which was to have restored Russia’s industrial and economic prosperity, but does not appear to have had' the desired result. Germany’s reputation is si ill suffering from the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews and because of their recent and provocative treatment of Austria. There is not much doubt that in these two matters the rank-and-file of the Nazi organisations got out of hand, and that the Dictator Hitler momentarily lost control of a section of his followers. ’His difficulty is to restrain the intense energy and patriotic fervour which he created in- his followers, in order to attain that political control of the nation which he is now exercising; for such energy and fervour require fields lor their exercise, and though they constitute the basis of the Government’s strength, they also constitute its danger, for, out of control, they might quickly involve the Dictator in endless trouble at homo and abroad. Of course the foundation of Germany’s state of unrest is in the need for territorial expansion. She has tried and failed in the west, where she tried to seize northern France in 1914. She now seems to be looking towards the east, in which quarter she sees the vast expanses of Russia-in-Europe, sparsely populated and fertile plains which could accommodate a much greater population than that which they support, and strangely enough the tendency of the Soviet Government seems to bo to look towards tile east, where it sees eastward of the Ural Mountains the immensely fertile Siberian Plain, where the Russian raco and Government would be remote from the congested and quarrelsome nations ol Europe. It is said that the Moscow Government has already planned and is still planning the creation of important industrial towns eastward of the

Ural Mountains, with a view to conforming with this national trend towards the oast, though it is hard to imagine the Russian Government willingly abandoning the Ukrain and other western provinces, merely in order that the Germans and other nations of Central Europe may expand. In the Far East, Japan continues to he a. source of apprehension, if not of fear. Having forcibly seized the vast territories of Manchuria and Jehol, she is now feverishly extending her commercial influence by shipping to all sorts of foreign markets the products of her cheap industrial labour. Her cottons, for instance, produced much below Manchester’s prices, are flooding the Indian market. Other Japanese products are being dumped wholesale into such countries as Australia and New Zealand, in spite of high tariff-walls, which are sealed easily because of the excessively low rates of wages which rule in Japan. It is suggested in England that the dumping of Japaneso cotton goods into India should be corrected by means of increased fiscal protection, and that the same remedy will he used m Australia and New Zealand and other British countries. Such a remedy could not bo mado to be discriminatory solely against Japan, but would have to apply to all foreign nations, and this might very •well lead to something resembling free trade within the Empire. Heretofore efforts in that direction have failed, because of the Dominions’ use of taxes on imports for the purposes of national revenue and the protection of local industrial enterprises. The idea of making the Empire a self-sustaining economic integer seems to have been abandoned definitely, but that does not mean that the nations of the Empire have ceased to aspire to closer relationship economically, which becomes increasingly important as foreign markets become impracticable because of high tariffs and low prices.