ENRICHING A COUNTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19940, 8 May 1928, Page 12

ENRICHING A COUNTRY.

Sir, —"Equilibrium is Best" now argues that foreign investments of the proceeds of exports would be powerless to enrich a country, so long as imports of "tangible wealth" were barred. But in practice they are not barred; that ban has been assumed merely because your correspondent insisted on it. He evidently does not appreciate the difference between possession and enjoyment of wealth. My contention has been that if he will not allow imports, a country could be enriched by accumulating the proceeds of exports; he has not yet dared to assert that exports being barred, it would be anything but impoverished by importing. Then he cites the cases of Britain and the United States. The former "in the process of becoming a creditor nation" —that is a rich nation —"exported in excess of her imports," and America has done the same. Is this not exactly my contention? The statement that Britain became the wealthiest pre-war nation in the world because for generations "her visible inward has greatly exceeded her visible outward trade" is doubly fallacious. By what right does your correspondent presume to limit tho question to "visible" trade ? In any case, the excess of visible inward trade is not a cause, but a consequence, of national wealth. The actual position !S that except in a few years, when Britain's wealth has been diminished, her tota] outward trade—visible and invisible—has been the greater and she has progressively increased tier wealth. Among the exceptions may be quoted that period of the war when British private investments in America were mobilised to pay for imports and to that extent, Britain was impoverished and America enriched. I have been qnite prepared to meet any argument based on reasonable theoretical grounds, but it is utterly irrational to confine the issue to "visible" trade, and since your correspondent has been driven to that hopeless defence, I am justified in regarding it as a virtual admission of surrender of his fantastic doctrine. The inevitable conclusion, which no economist with any pretension of authority would venture to challenge, is that the national wealth is enhanced by a real surplus of exports, not by the reverse. Economy.

THE MELANESIAN MISSION. Sir, —Last week you published a photograph of Dr. L. M. May bury, who was leaving for the mission field, and it was stated that he was the first doctor for Melanesia. This is incorrect, as other stout fellows have laboured in that Hying field of work, notably Drs. Wclehman and Marshall, and we owe it to their memories and to the splendid record of self-sacrificing work that their names should not be forgotten. H.S.N.R.