THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1931. COUNSELS OF HOPE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 21037, 23 November 1931, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1931. COUNSELS OF HOPE.

With his gloomy view of the world situation General Smuts has linked certain counsels of hope. It would have been unlike him to give place without a fight to any threat of evil, just as it would have been to underestimate any such threat. To face facts at their possible worst and then make plans to counter the peril in them is good strategy, wholly befitting him. Others will do well to follow so doughty a-campaigner, proved in high politics no less than in war, and will be encouraged to do this by remembrance of his frequent service as adviser by request in sundry national and international crises since he came to eminence. With so definite a turn in _ the economic tide in Britain —a considerable and maintained decrease in unemployment, associated with a revival in industry and a changed political outlook —there may be too easy an assumption that the world's ills are quickly being remedied. There is improvement; but to make it prevalent and secure is impossible without steadfast pursuing of the course set and resolute confronting of the dangers ahead. General Smuts rightly emphasises the critical condition of Central Europe in financial affairs. It lias to be owned that Germany's troubles are by no means over; at best there has been a brief respite, and even this has brought less ease than was hoped. And Germany can never be considered apart; adjacent nations, to say nothing of others, will be imperilled by any collapse she suffers. Nor is financial stress the only ill. It provides an opportunity for mutinous political parties to win adherence and snatch power, by the turning of discontent into reckless anger with any existing Government. Hence the risk of sudden and hurtful political changes, ; forced by blind impatience, and of even disastrous social upheaval, produced by Communist intrigue.

This interlocking of financial and political problems is inevitable -with the development of democratic institutions beyond the capabilities of those enfranchised. The possession of a vote confers no ability to understand intricate affairs of State, although it may contribute a useful impulse to some study of them ; and the chance' of foolish action by masses under the sway of mistaken or unprincipled leaders is always more or less present. But General Smuts notes another interlocking of problems in the equally inevitable impinging, nowadays, of the experiences and policies of various nations. The world tends to become a social unit. So arises the necessity for large-scale action in meeting economic and other crises. The steps to be taken toward safety and prosperity involve international co-opera-tion, and in those now demanding thought there is little to be gained by merely national effort. These steps, as named by General Smuts, are a thorough overhaul of the vexed question of reparations and international debts and an agreement about the reduction and limitation of armaments. These are related, in that the burdens left by'the last war impress the desirability of never incurring the like again, and even the writing off of the whole indebtedness now borne could be of no permanent value if this were to lead to burdensome expenditure of an unproductive sort in armaments. There is thus pointed the way to an agreement, as worldwide as the incidence of the disability, to be done with past indebtedness as far as that is feasible and to take safeguards against squandering resources in any similar way in the future. Only in a fully international conference can agreement be reached on action to meet either necessity. Arrangements are complete for discussion of armaments ; the other requires similar attention quite as urgently. In his references to Imperial problems General Smuts comes nearer home —without forgetting that these are an integral part of the larger whole, for the Empire's difficulties are partly created by worldwide economic trouble and for the rest are marked by the same inter-rela-tion of financial and political affairs. 'However, there are some things that the Empire can do for itself and others it can attempt on its own initiative. It can deal with its own constitutional development, as in the Statute of Westminster and the future of India, and it can make an Imperial fiscal readjustment that will stimulate industry and commerce throughout the realm. Doing these things wisely, it will contribute its important share to universal betterment and order. It cannot safely leave them undone: there is more peril in inaction than in incomplete action, and General Smuts interprets the result of the general election in Britain as a salutary expression of a sense of danger in unheroic drifting. That reading is correct: the National Government was given a mandate to make a new departure, without any precise direction—to get the needful thing done, and done quickly, the Government was trusted, as it deserved to beafter its first manful grapple with the need. This Dominion has come to the same situation, and General Smuts' counsels of hope have as plain application here. There is the same interlocking of problems, the same risk of financial streps being exploited by a mutinous political party in an endeavour to snatch power, the same menace of social upheaval produced by anti-social intrigue. To sense the danger is the first requisite. Though industry and commerce be on the mend, full recovery will involvo prolonged and strenuous effort. The only way is the way Britain has taken. Encouragement for this is doubly given in the firstfruits now being harvested in the Homeland through industrial revival and in the resolute attack upon the problem already made by the Government of this country. A similar victory for sane policy would be this Dominion's contribution to world prosperity.