THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 1914. PRACTICAL PATRIOTISM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15686, 13 August 1914, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 1914. PRACTICAL PATRIOTISM.

New Zealand and the Empire stand face to face with a great crisis, of which the issue depends absolutely upon ourselves. By land and by sea our military and naval forces must be increased and maintained, must be equipped, fed and moved. No matter what number of fighting men may be required they must be found j; no matter,, what,the cost ;it must be paid. Commerce cannot but be disturbed in spite of British command of the seas; industry must necessarily be to some extent disorganised ; but the steady maintenance of our commerce and the unfaltering employment of our industrial energies will not only provide the sinews of war but reduce to a I minimum the domestic pressure that may be felt by the Empire and by New Zealand. Behind the Imperial battle-line, which encloses the Pacific as the Atlantic, which secures New Zealand as Old England, our sheltered lands are as fertile as ever and the need for production greater than before. Industry may be disturbed but it must be increased, not suspended. Every man should do his utmost to reorganise it and none can do more than the men on the land. Thousands of patriotic New Zealanders are volunteering for the wherever tho front may be. Thousands more are eager to take a part in warlike operations. None should undervalue the fighting man and the loyal service he offers, but none should forget that the duty of those who do not go to fight is to work and work hard— fast as work can be provided. To permit industry to slacken now would be fatal. To stimulate it and to labour strenuously to increase the production of wealth is not only a duty as fundamental as fighting but is the one and only way of meeting the monstrous cost of war.

During the past ten or fifteen, years New Zealand has enjoyed a period of prosperity such as she bad never known before. This has been due almost entirely to the increased price of food products in the markets of the world. The great European war now raging, no matter how it ends,'will cause such an enormous wastage of this class of material that the price of meat and grain and of nearly every class of exportable food will rise in value, for the demand will expand. Even without war, the ever-growing capacity of the Old World and America to absorb farm produce at a high' price promised to agriculture a greater remuneration for the uso of labour and capital than any other form of industry; New* Zealand could have doubled its food production without depressing the market and with enormous benefit to herself. With a great war eating up accumulated resources there is scope for more than a doubled production and there is more than pecuniary benefit to be gained. We can confer the greatest \ of boons upon our own people at Home. As long as we. can grow and send them foodstuffs and raw material they can send us manufactured goods in exchange. The Association of Chambers of Commerce in Britain has issued an appeal to the Overseas Dominions not to decrease orders for British

goods but to increase them. The Mother Country has a huge industrial population and manufacturers are doing their best to provide employment. They cannot succeed if the overseas British restrict trade at such a time. Moreover, any contraction of trade with Britain now means a decrease in her power to purchase from us in the near future. Tho food markets of Britain have made New Zealand rich and prosperous. The sale of meat, of wool, and of dairy produce has enabled us to build cities in this Dominion and to cover our provinces with the conveniences of civilisation. The welfare of New Zealand in peace as well as in war depends upon the welfare of the Mother' Country and to allow commerce to decline now would be as feckless a thing as to restrict the supply of ammunition when our lads go into battle.

New Zealand's chief source of trade and commerce is agriculture. Our annual export of £20,000,000 of agricultural products represents tho greater portion of our national income. It lies within our power this season to lift our income by millions more. We can do this by increasing our fields of wheat and oats, of maize and barley, by multiplying our flocks and conserving our herds. There is time enough yet in all parts of the Dominion to sow all the grains, time to make provision for fodder crops and expansion of pastures so that our flocks and herds. can have abundance of food and thus increase and develop as rapidly as possible. In the temporary disorganisation of commerce due to the war a certain number of people in the cities are being thrown out of employment. The number will be relatively few if our people keep their heads cool and their hearts courageous, but even were the number large there need be no idlers, for profitable work can be found on the farms of this country for more labour than can be obtained. All farmers cannot suddenly employ extra labour and make expensive improvements unless financial assistance is obtained, but no one should be blind to the fact that money expended judiciously on increased farm production is the safest and surest investment at this crisis. If financial institutions assist the farmer they strengthen themselves, for the fanner is the great creator of wealth and he has never before had such an incentive to create it so rapidly. The' state, as represented by the Government, can do much to uphold the credit of this country and to assist in its financial progress by making lands easily and rapidly available for everyone who will work them and make' them productive. It can, .where necessary, allow improvements to count as rent or payments; it can set' its trained officials ,to the task of helping settlers and farmers to improve their lands. If the nation at this critical time devotes its energies in the right direction New Zealand, instead of, suffering by this world-wide war, may even transform it to a benefit. Peace and prosperity have not stimulated agriculture to any great extent. Let us hope that whatever else war does it will stir our people to such Energy that the farming industry of this country will expand during the next twelve months more than it has expanded during the past twelve years.

It will be said: "What of the cities What, of -the married men with families, the single- men with dependent homes, who cannot take to farming V . But the cities live by the country the cities exist because the country produces and the, energetic application of all possible labour to farming operations will lift dead-weight from.the shoulders of the cities. For the rest, those public works which have for their object the assistance of production and the facilitation of the export trade should be proceeded with more strenuously than evernot do-, laycd for a single unnecessary day. " Courage and confidence" should be our national note. Courage and confidence in the fighting line; courage and confidence in the back blocks; courage and • confidence where ministers meet and where the captains of industry gather together. For us to care for and to maintain those who are. left in our charge by the men who go to fight our battles and to risk their lives in our defence is a sacred trust; for us to help in organised fashion those who suffer unduly from the temporary dislocation of industry is a duty; for us to maintain by charity, honest and industrious workers who arc able to work while tho Dominion is clamouring for necessary public works and while unused land waits to yield to labour would be as foolish as it would be criminal. The war will waste enough of our wealth find take away enough of our industrial energy without our wasting needlessly the labour that can create wealth and the industrial energy of which wo have not too much, but too little. The Government has an unprecedented difficulty to cope with but it has tho unprecedented advantage of acting for a united people which has forgotten party and abjured class and will loyally follow whore it is ably led. We 1 firmly believe that Mr. Massoy will prove equal to this great emergency and that Sir Joseph Ward will think only of his country in considering any national plan for increasing production and employing "surplus" labour upon national development.