NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21225, 4 July 1932, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

AMERICA'S PLIGHT. "The contrast in America to-day between the accumulation of gold and the blighting of life and happiness is among the most unexpected and astounding things in human experience," writes Mr. J. L. Garvin, in the London Observer. "We ventured to say a few months ago that America was cutting her own throat with a golden razor. In tho economic sense this is not a pietaphor but a fact. Payment of war-debts by Europe, over and above the habitual balance of trade in favour of the United States, led to the prodigious accumulation of gold. The consequences ' were of two kinds and affected very differently the receivers and the payers. On the one hand American enterprise was lured into unprecedented orgies of optimistic imagination. Overconfidence, over-construction, over-trading of every kind; mortgaging of future purchasing power by the instalment system; jubilance in speculation—all these were carried to a height bound to end in an economic crash. Had Mephistopheles wished to manipulate America he need not have planned and worked it otherwise." THE, PROBLEM OF INDIA. Speaking at the Calcutta dinner in London, Sir Hugh Stephenson said the great lesson of his official career in India was that, on the one hand, even a Government of all the talents could not now carry on without the assistance of the various elements making up the community, and, on the other hand, that none of those elements could afford in their own interests to withhold that assistance. An essential element in the make-up of an administrator in India today was the faculty of making friends in all sections of the community. Circumstances and false analogies might have gone far to turn good civilian officers into bad politicians; but administration and not politics was their job, and it was everyday administration that affected the man in the street and in the field. They were all anxious that India should have as complete political freedom as possible. But it had all to be put eventually in the terms of everyday administration, and the more they could get away from abstractions to which no two parties attached precisely the same meaning, and tried to visualise the actual effect of changes on their ordinary lives, tho nearer they would get to a solution. He thought tho ordinary man in India, the man who was never heard of, was beginning to do this. The Franchise Committee in particular had roused him to tho fact that something was going to happen, and he was beginning to get very anxious. He was not concerned with the nice adjustment of federal machinery; but he did want to know whether he was to be permitted to go about his lawful occasions in peace and security, and if so whether he would have to pay more for the privilege. Terrorism was a thing apart and it was hot going to disappear with the present constitution. If those who succeeded them thought that it .could be wiped out by an amnesty, they would be terribly disillusioned. It could be eradicated only by improvement in economic conditions, a steady and continued pressure on the part of the executive, and an effective improvement in tho strength of public opinion.

TARIFF AND EXCHANGE. Tho task of finding an equilibrium of tariff policies at Ottawa or elsewhere was inescapably bound up in comparative internal costs, and these were changing relatively daily, not in their real value but in their monetary expression, which was the only thing tariff systems could take heed of, said Sir Josiah Stamp in an address at the London Canadian Club. A tariff discrimination expressed in money might be most scientifically based upon differences in costs this year and could bo hopelessly wrong next. Tho dependence of Canada upon world prices was greater than ever. It was sometimes thought that her decision to adhere to some fixed relation of her currency to the New York dollar as distinct from joining sterling, or adopting some intermediate level, rested upon the importance of her not having to pay a substantial premium on her heavy New York obligations. It was then said she could not possibly afford this premium, or its general effect upon her credit. But this dilemma was more apparent than real, for even if she left her present dollar standard and her internal price level rose she still had to pay her New York obligations in effect with gold prices raised abroad for her wheat, and the relation between her internal dollar and the New York dollar was immaterial for that purpose. Although it was' important for Canada to raisq her internal price level for the successful prosecution of her industries and for tho balancing of her provincial budgets, sho might be no more successful than Britain had been if the advantage given by her exchange depreciation should continue to be offset by falling gold prices abroad. But it might well be better for her internal price level to romain practically the same as now, even if she could not raise it, than for it to fall continupusly with the American, for America was far better balanced internally to stand further price depreciation than Canada. Tho Ottawa problem # was far more than a problem of developing the Dominion industrially and securing an assured market for her exports; it was much moro now a question of joining in the common task of arresting the con- . tinued appreciation of gold.