BRITAIN AND AMERICA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24431, 17 October 1940, Page 8

BRITAIN AND AMERICA

COMPLETE UNION URGED GUARANTEE OF SECURITY FORCE IN WORLD RECOVERY (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) LONDON. Oct. 15. In an article in the Daily Express the House cf Commons member Colonel Wedgwood (Lab.) recommends not only a British and United States alliance, but a complete union with one sovereign Parliament, also a common Foreign Office. Colonial Office, defence service, supreme court, free trade, and a stable currency. Colonel Wedgwood says; “An alliance is not enough. One union government can alone give security in the long struggle before us. No State, not even Britain, can hope to recover alone. Left alone, all seem certain to sink in barbarism and anarchy. Many here are prejudiced against Americans. Many more subconsciously sympathise with the totalitarians. The working class realises, as others must, that as the war goes on all will become poorer and increasingly in need of a great and powerful State to feed. save, and restore them.”

THE ECONOMIC FIELD CHANCE FOR CO-OPERATION (British Official Wireless) RUGBY, Oct. 15. (Received Oct. 16, at 7 p.m.) Elements of post-war economic stability are discussed in The Times, which says; “ The Lord Willingdon mission to South America will be largely concerned with the disposal of large surpluses of food and other commodities accumulated in those countries, partly as the result of the British blockade. _ It will have to consider how Britain can co-operate in the policy laid' down in the resolutions of the Pan-American conference for the orderly and systematic distribution and sale of these surpluses. There is a great opening here for Anglo-American cooperation in the economic field, and that the co-operation need not be confined to the American continent is shown by the agreement between them last week over the Australian wool clip. Two Great Democracies “ Britain and the United States have common interests in the financial and economic stability of primary production countries. This will not end with the war, and the two great democracies must need get together betimes and create machinery to prevent a recurrence of the catastrophic fluctuations which culminated in the great depression of 1931. These alternations of boom and slump undermined the whole economic structure. Primary production is the base upon which is built the whole complex structure of industry, trade, and finance. When there is no stability at the base the superstructure cannot be prevented from tottering. At the end of the war both the British Government and the American will find themselves in control of great quantities of all the main foodstuffs and raw materials, and it would surely be a fatal error to dissipate these stocks instead of using them to lay the foundation of a more stable economic structure. This work should be taken in hand now when everyone is animated by a common purpose and not be put off till after the war. There should be no more effective reply to Nazi gibes about pluto-democracy than to show by practical action of this kind that democracy is capable of reconciling the claim of individual and national liberty with those of economic security.”