THE BRITISH NATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 3698, 27 January 1925, Page 53

THE BRITISH NATION.

AN AMERICAN PRESS TRIBUTE. (New- York Bun. November 15.) There is something in the prosaic figures daily recording the value of the pound sterling in the exchange markets which challenges the imagination. A paltry 5 nor cent, is all that now separates the pound from the gold sovereign, and it is as certain as anything can be certain that both will once more soon be identical. How many of our people realise the full measure of the achievement silently recorded by these quotations? Great Britain came out of the war with a national debt of eight billions sterling, which represented one-thira of her national wealth, and a budget balancing at not far short of fifteen hundred millions sterling, or two-fifths of the national income 1 Debt had increased eleven times and budget had increased over eight times. She had spent on the war in one way or another about ten billion pounds sterling, mo-e than onethird of which she bad raised by taxation. One-quarter of her foreign investments had been sold.

When the boom of 1920 collapsed she had on her hands an army of unemployed. Her trade was shot to pieces; two of her good customers, Germany and Russia, were out of business. Strikes in her coal trade and transport industry threated to paralyse her industrial life. Her harbours were full of idle ships; Clyde and Tyne shipyards were idle. She owed us four and one-half billion dollars, and all the rest of the world owed her. The pound sterling had dropped to less than 3.20 dollars--a discount of 34 per cent.

The British people faced the situation, grim as it was, with determination equally grim, and went to work again in the same old way. They came to us, their creditor, negotiated for terms of payment of their debt to us, and began to pay interest and sinking fund as agreed. They pressed none of theii own debtors. They turned a deaf ear to the timid souls who counselled abandonment of the pound to “devaluation” and rejected all other “short cuts” and

“easy ways” suggested by economists and amateurs. They stopped isuing more currency notes. They went out again overseas gathering up old threads, renewing old connections, looking for new ones.

Bit by bit the pound sterling came back, bit. bv bit trade increased, coal production rose to tho old figures the Manchester trade was worring along somehow, idle ship tonnage began to find some charters. Our oil magnates know what Britain has been doing ai>out oil. She took some nine months of a “Labour Government*’ without a whimper, and then turned it out with an emphatic gesture. Hard as life is in Britain to-day—and no American who has not lived there can knojv how hard it is—the British people will have none of Communism or Socialism or any other ism. Britain has set its hand once more to the old tasks, hard work, payment of debts, anti sound finance. The British trader is again “hull down on the long trail, the old trail, tho out trail*’ that leads to all the ends of the earth. One by one British ships are going into commission * and again into cargo. Lombard Street is again levying toll on the world’s trade in the old w r ay. British made* goods are again appearing in the markets all over the world. Britain is doing business at the old stand. The grim courage of British people is an inspiring spectacle. While the currency of the other war-torn countries of Europe became—and still is—degraded, and in some instances disappeared altogether, the English people said: “This shall never happen to British currency.” . And with all the rugged force that is in them they got back of their currency and set it on the road to the gold standard.