THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 1931. THE YEAR AHEAD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20761, 2 January 1931, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 1931. THE YEAR AHEAD.

The old year has ended, the world has already seen the dawn of 1931. What manner of year it will be is necessarily a question that everyone puts to himself in some form or other. It does not matter that the change of tho calendar is largely conventional, that the movements, tendencies, and conditions which most affect the life and happiness of the community are not interrupted by the turn of the year. It is true that few old ledgers are closed on December 31, or new ones opened on January 1. There is a convenient opportunity at that season, none the less, to review a period of 12 months, to estimate the chances of a like period to come. The time for review is ended. The time to consider the future has come. And now, at the dawn of 1931, it has to be recognised, so it may be admitted, frankly, that the outlook is by no means so assured as tho community would like to see it. The world is in the grip of conditions which spell anxiety and difficulty almost everywhere, yet nobody is confident in assessing the causes of, offering the remedies for, or predicting the duration of them. It is now more than a decade since the turn of the year brought an evitable question, would the coming of another January see the war still unfinished. It was impossible to be blind to the anxiety, peril, grief and strain that uncertainty must bring. Yet millions on whom the burden fell faced it with undaunted spirit. Nobody can imagine 1931 bringing anything comparable with what the war meant to almost the whole civilised world. The spirit that sustained humanity then should be more than sufficient to make it face valiantly and to bring it triumphant through the worst the future can offer.

The world-wide emergency is almost wholly economic in character. So far as a limited human vision can see, there is no shadow of a war among the nations hanging over humanity. Neither is there any known prospect of a great social upheaval likely to affect the whole fabric of civilised society. Assuming that estimate to be correct it offers one reason, and no small reason, for thanksgiving. Also, it promises to leave humanity the freer to attack the problems which are plainly indicated. The chief of these is usually described as a period of universal depression. It does not spring from scarcity, but rather from oversupply, not from bad harvests, but from over-abundant harvests. For this reason it has proved the more baffling. When the world is short of anything for which there is a universal demand, the challenge is obvious, to waste no time, to spare no effort, but to produce it freely. For the converse circumstance there is not so much experience as a guide. War and scarcity present problems that are as old as tho human race. Peace and oversupply are not so familiar. The coming year will bring the necessity for facing them squarely. They are, reduced to simple terms, the causes beneath the difficulties with which conferences of nations, statesmen, economists and social experts are called upon to wrestle. By common consent reorganisation and readjustment are the terms used to describe what is needed by the civilised world. What is yet awaited is a more precise definition of them and the evolution of a working formula for their application. This need is what overshadows the dawn of the year. By the progress toward it, the character of 1931 will largely be determined. The best omen is that humanity has never yet failed to show the resource and adaptability necessary to conquer its difficulties, and it should not fail now.

In that part of the world most important to New Zealand, the British Empire, and in New Zealand itself, the position is usually summed up in the question when prices will improve, and to what height they will rise again from levels generally agreed to be abnormally low. On the answer depend the intensity of effort needed to maintain, and the hope of improving standards of life won by long persistent effort. Here again is part of the enigma of 1931. That the position will be faced and the battle won is an article of faith with all the people. Yet to do it involves various readjustments, and nobody denies that the year just begun must see part of a struggle with an enemy that can be more baffling than a physical foe. How far it will proceed and what the early gains will be, it is impossible to predict. At the outset, leaders in public life have expressed their belief that the inherent strength of character of the people, the qualities tested in many a crisis of the past, will again prove equal to the test. At a time of transition like this, that is almost as much as can be said, but it is worth saying, and it deserves to be accepted as truth, not merely something nicely phrased to please the ear. Before 1914 it was often said that the British raco had deteriorated, that peace, prosperity and soft living had destroyed the qualities which had made it great. That year and the four which followed proved the assertion false and baseless. The crisis of the present time, which it is useless to deny, calls for the exercise of similar qualities in a different field. The same dismal prophecies are being heard. They will prove just as false. That is the Roundest belief in which to face a future which, if uncertain, is in no way comparable with the ordeal safely passed little more than a decade ago. 1