RECOVERY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21278, 3 September 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

RECOVERY

THE NEGLECTED FACTOR

BT VERITAS,

The question of possible recovery from the economic impasse which the world has reached is in every mind. The newspapers are scanned by all, to see if there is not something of an encouraging nature on which the mind can fix, some rise in price, be it ever so small, some resolution of this conference or that, some ray of sunlight. At one time the feeling predominates that we are in the grip of world forces outside our control; at another the urge appears to be up and doing something practical within the range of our own country's life. All the time we are certain that the whole matter is very complex and difficult. No sooner have we thought out one aspect of the problem than some other facet swings up before our impatient minds and leaves us breathless.

One thing seems clear. Fourteen years | after the war, we seem to be back in the chaos that immediately followed it. We made one attempt to make peace and reconstruct the world, but we failed in large measure, and are now called upon to make another and more difficult attempt. Tt is more difficult not merely because the years since the war have created their own problems, but because it is now impossible to isolate our problems. Man's activities in every sphere of life react upon one another more rapidly, more directly, and more intimately than in any previous age. A shortage or misuse of gold, the rash extension or the sudden arrest of credit, will change the fortunes of the factories or farms on the other side of the world. Moreover, money and credit and the whole framework of finance within which economic activity proceeds are themselves profoundly affected by whatever happens in other spheres of human effort and ambition —for example, by political aspirations and dangers, by social demands and legislation. In addition, the whole massed problem is flung before us each day by the improvement in the mechanism for the transmission of news. In the hurry thus created, our minds tend to cling to some of the more obvious visible things which can be weighed and measured, as symptoms or causes of our trouble. Definite Causes The special problems of money and gold, credit and finance, reparation and war debts, commercial policies and tariffs, industrial organisation, government regulation and control, and political security are turned over in our minds. They are all tangible and definite, and they all play some part in the troubles of this time, which are expressed in widespread unemployment. But we soon find that clear outlines of an analytic nature become blurred by the need for some comprehensive principles of thought which are capable of guiding recovery in each one of these spheres simultaneously. The economic and financial foreground fades into the social and political background, and at once we are reminded that we must not look merely at the surface. We shall find neither explanation nor cure for the present depression and financial crisis if we look only at the causes that immediately precipitated them. We must turn our gazfe to older and more obscure weaknesses and defects, of which recent events have been merely the symptoms and expression. Unemployment is the most distressing feature of the scene before us, as it reflects the sum total of economic disturbances arising from many causes, each of which needs separate consideration and a different remedy. The action designed directly to deal with the unemployed as a measure of social justice and necessity, may sometimes relieve,* sometimes aggravate, the evils from which unemployment comes, but it does not reach the leal root of the trouble. ; We undervalue the profound changes in desires and * aspirations that, underlie economic processes. The demand for increased socialisation, whether wise or unwise, springs less from a desire for material comfort than for preference for working in the service of the community, rather than that of profit-making shareholders. The nationalism that finds its expression .in tariffs is not itself mainly of an economic origin. Thus many human aspirations which are not economic in nature find expression in the economic structure, and honest minds are driven back in'their thinking beyond the economic and financial level through the social and political level on to the rock bottom of morals. The Moral Factor

The neglected factor in our thinking on the question of recovery is thus the moral one. Long ago the. Greeks taught us that politics depend on ethics, but we need t<» relearn the lesson once more in the present day. . Our minds have become so superficial and our outlook so specialised that we find it hard to understand the true causes of our own' distress. Take the one thing of tho reflex effects of loan money dishonestly spent. It is unnecessary to argue as to what is likely to be the effect ontho loan market of the discovery that previous loan money has often been spent on nonreproductive schemes, to keep this or that political party in power. Credit is a spiritual thing, based on honourable understandings. Can we wonder that confidence flies out of the window when dishonesty enters the door ? In every country in the world this has happened, and we can scarcely wonder that liquidity of capital resources has been preferred to the prospect of repudiation. So the invisible bonds of mutual trust have been weakened. Competitive liquidity based on fears, so largely justified, has taken the place of constructive investment. On the other hand, cupidity as the natural expression of human selfishness has grown as the economic world has become largely uncontrolled by the moral outlook. Depressions on stock exchanges are the natural effect of previous immoral booms, whether in land values or stocks. This state of affairs has been largely produced by an education which emphasises information at the expense of character-building, and kills the imagination on which alone social sympathy can be builfc up. The inability to co-operate between nations or between individuals is created by moral limitations. Underlying these moral is a pi'ofound weakness on the spiritual side of life. Man and His Tasks Thus before the magnitude of the tasks man's spirit seems for the moment, to have faltered and his vision contracted. The public mood is apprehensive where it should be bold, and defensive where » broad and generous policy is most required. Everywhere men fly to new tariffs and restrictions, to nationalist policies, domestic currencies, parochial purchasing, and personal hoarding, like frightened rabbits scurrying to a burrow. Surely the moral enthusiasm of our ago can be so aroused as to see that all this is for the moment only. A few years ago, when the war was on, all countries showed resources we now require of courage, of personal devotion, of Industrial and financial leadership. Wo are, if we could grapple with our fate, the most fortunate of the generations of men. Now, and now only, our material resources, technical knowledge and industrial skill, are enough to afford to every man physical comfort, adequate leisure, and access to everything in our rich heritage of civilisation that he has the personal quality to enjoy. We need, however, the regulative wisdom to control our specialised activities and the thrusting energy of sectional and selfish interests. To face the troubles that beset us this apprehensive age needs now, above all the qualities it seems for the moment to have abandoned —courage and magnanimity. Our chief problem is therefore a moral problem, and man's moral problems can only be solved, as they have ever been solved, by the renewal of man's spiritual life by touch with a Righteousness more than human.