POLICY OF DEVELOPMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22824, 7 March 1936, Page 7

POLICY OF DEVELOPMENT

ECONOMIC AND MILITARY THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH PRIME MINISTER'S VIEWS (Pi» United Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 8. Xhe conviction that at the present critical Juncture there Bhould be a roundtable conference between representatives of various parts of the British Commonwealth of Nations to discuss and determine some united course of action, both in an economic and military sense, for the future was expressed by the Prime Minister in an interview. "It should not only be concerned with matters of defence but should lay down a general policy of development," he said. "At the present time we do not know enough about what Britain is doing and Britain does not know enough about .what we are doing. That also applies to other parts of the Empire. For instance, we do not know what they are doing in Australia to any great extent. I notice there is a possibility, according to a newspaper report, of British Ministers visiting the dominions. If they do come and come only to express their own ideas about things which may be capsized when they get back, we won't get very far. They should have some authority behind them and some ideas." Mr Savage said that as he had stated once before the first line of defence should be population, and that did not mean sending people abroad to struggle for themselves, but it meant a defined policy. When the representatives of the British Empire met they should begin at the beginning, and the beginning meant the filling in of the empty spaces, not with struggling wage-earners, but with people using the land and developing industries.