BRITAIN’S PLIGHT

Opunake Times, 2 April 1948, Page 2

BRITAIN’S PLIGHT

NOT FULLY REALIZED - STB (MG COMMENT There are two nations (in Britain) today, says the “Economist.” Those who realise the plight of the country and the looming catastrophe which threatens British economy, and perhaps the British way of life, and those who still cherish the illusion of prosperity, a full wage packet and easy profit. In recent weeks, thanks large■v to the frank realism of Sir Stafford Cripps, the gulf of understanding between the two has narrowed. But it,must be reluctantly confessed, even now, that a majority of the people are still unable, or unwilling, to form anv conception of the economic and ultimately political, peril in which the country stands. Bickaring It ig disheartening, the journal continues, to see how quickly the lessons which the White Paper on personal incomes preaches have been lost in unprofitable bickering. It admits that there hag been a great improvement in publicity about economic affairs recently but adds that the publicity is still couched iu terms utterly remote from the average man.

Th© - steelworker, it suggests, is more interested Mir football pools than the-White Papers on personal incomes. What is needed is something winch is honest, yet inspired by the common touch.

That demands, first, a most scrupulous demand for facts untinctured by political hopes or prejudices. Secondly, the average man-and woman must be shown what the facts mean in terms of food on their plates and clothes on their backs.—Aid for Britain, No. 9.