THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, JULY 30, 1936 DOMINION AND EMPIRE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22794, 30 July 1937, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, JULY 30, 1936 DOMINION AND EMPIRE

Seldom, if ever, has a Prime Minister returned from an Imperial Conference giving a more racy or more life-like account of its proceedings than Mr. Savage has given. He has clothed the dry bones with flesh and blood. Imperial defence and foreign policy were the chief subjects and, without breaching any confidence, Mr. Savage has managed to tell the public a good deal of his part in what took place. That is all to the good. An informed and interested public offers the best support to the Government in discharging the responsibilities that, the Prime Minister reiterates, must be discharged. He has defence proposals to make and these are shortly to be laid before Parliament. There is a healthy ring of active intention about his statements and the actual proposals will bo awaited with interest. While in London Mr. Savage wisely sought technical guidance, although ho was perhaps guilty of under-statement as to how much New Zealand was capable of doing in her own defence against any possible invasion. At the same time his enunciation of general policy was sound, and should win universal approval. He definitely linked local defence with Imperial defence, and New Zealand's fate with that of Britain and the Empire. His view may be no more than enlightened national self-interest but the warmth of his references to British ideals and the British people happily betrays decision strengthened by underlying feeling. New Zealand is proud to find her representative proposing a common defence policy for the Empire, a proposal that could not be formally accepted by some Dominions, but that is being given substance by technical co-operation in many ways.

Not so satisfactory from one who has declared that New Zealand's best defence is population was Mr. Savage's attitude to immigration. Ho made the reception of British settlers dependent on assured and expanding markets in Britain. His argument is plausible but it creates a closed circle., A statesman should attempt to break out of it by a positive proposition because, after all, it is New Zealand that the circle cages. Faced by an imminent population problem herself, Britain may not be willing a few years hence to part with any of her able-bodied young people. That would leave New Zealand, with her stationary population, standing still in perpetuity at her present limited stage of development. Unless the Government .is content to stagnate, it should seriously sit down to draft a scheme to work in with the machinery that, Mr. Savage says, Mr. Malcolm MacDonald is preparing for use. If the same intensive application were given to this subject as was to that of communications, Mr. Savage should have been able to note achievements matching those relating to shipping and civil aviation. It is clear that the conference has enabled the British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand Governments to make virtually complete arrangements for a modern Pacific shipping service, an agreement of first-class importance. Similarly the Tasman air link is shortly to be forged, joining New Zealand at long last with the great Imperial chain. In this sphere of civil aviation he is able to speak of the adoption of an Empire policy and one, it may be added, that is already being actively worked out over continents and oceans. Its value in peacetime grows rapidly and the defensive implications need no emphasis.

On questions of general foreign policy, the Prime Minister shows that he attempted to persuade the conference that peace could best be assured by economic appeasement—by rectifying or removing the economic causes of conflict. He seems both surprised and disappointed that the conference was not prepared to accept his solution wholeheartedly. Actually, whether consciously or not, he was putting forward the Marxist or materialistic interpretation of history. Without casting back into a past that contains the Crusades and the Thirty Years' War, his hearers would no doubt reflect that economic motives were impotent against the political, racial, religious or national motives that to-day have sway in Ireland, Danzig, Memel, tho Saar, Palestine, Austria, or Germany herself. Man docs not live by bread alone. Again, suppose Mr. .Savage's thesis were accepted and Britain, Franco and America agreed to ease the financial straits of Germany or Italy—how would that economic relief be used 1 Fearful of the answer, Mr. Chamberlain and others therefore insist that political settlements must precede or accompany economic assistance. Mr. Savage' himself, whilepreaching tho general theory of economic disarmament, rejected it when applied to an actual case, that of tho United States, which came before the conference. "Being asked to make an agreement with any nation which meant sacrificing the interests of our own," he said, "was expecting too much of us." Apparently it was much too much. The descent from the general to the particular is always difficult. Mr. Savage found that out at the conference and was honest enough to confess it. Affairs were not,so simple as they appeared. Endless complications showed up on close examination. It will always be so in a living, real world of well-intentioned but weak and fallible human beings. Mr. Savage should spare his feelings of disappointment and shortcoming; he speaks of eye-openers and now he is helping to open the eyes of the public to a larger world. His mission has not been in yain,.