THE NEW YEAR

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 14, 5 January 1934, Page 7

THE NEW YEAR

THERE is hope in a new year. In some strange way we feel that better fortune will attend us in the year that immediately lies before us. Why we should cherish this solace as an old year full of disappointments slips away into time it is hard to say, for the first day of a new year is simply a following on in unbroken sequence of the last day of the old year with its heritage of good and evil. There is no new year. It is a figment of the imagination ; a mere matter of the calendar. But still on New Year’s Day fresh hopes and anticipations are raised, and it is well it should be, even if our good resolutions are never carried to completion and our high hopes never fully realised. It is better to resolve highly and fail than never to resolve at all. Now we stand at the threshold of 1934. What does it hold for us? Whether it will be a prosperous one for New Zealand will probably be decided in the first few months. In that time the great American experiment will have carried the United States on to a measure of recov-

ery or it will have shown its failure. If it proves successful a lead to better times for the world will be given ; if it collapses in failure the world will be plunged in deeper distress. Within that time the butter quota question which hangs over us like a cloud should be resolved, and it will be seen clearer whether we can extend our dairy industry or whether it will have to be curtailed ; whether settlement can go on or be halted. Our experiments of chilled beef export will have been further tried out, and if favourable we can breathe easier in regard to our export of meat. By then also we will know whether wool prices are to remain firm, and ‘ fortunately there is every appearance they will do so. Everything points to our fate for a prosperous year or otherwise being decided in the first three months of the year. In a New Year message to the people of New Zealand, the Prime Minister expresses a confident belief in a dawning prosperity, and his colleague, Mr. Coates, in a review of the year issued to the people of the Dominion, states that the progress that has been made to recovery can be regarded with satisfaction. We fervently trust that the one is a true prophtet, and the other states a matter of fact.