The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 1932. “PLOTS AND PLANS”

Southland Times, Issue 21728, 14 June 1932, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 1932. “PLOTS AND PLANS”

At this stage it is not worth while traversing the suggestion that the Great War was brought about by a financial conspiracy which caused the war in order to amass profits, and certainly when the evidence adduced by Mr Norman Mclntyre to prove that declaration consists of a sweeping assertion by Lord Welby, and references to the fact that the governments of Germany, France and Britain were building up their armaments. That the nations were expecting war has been abundantly clear—the British Navy was convinced in 1911 that the conflict would come late in 1914 or in the following year—but that did not mean that a conspiracy to cause a war was working. Forces move in the world with almost irresistible power, and those who see those forces moving prepare, but do not, therefore, cause wars. Those forces, as Sir Norman Angell has shown, are impelled by public opinion, the “unseen assassins” which invariably plead innocence because they do not understand their own power and their own responsibility. It is the failure to realize that in democracies public opinion, often misguided, frequently wrong and frequently right, is the real actuating force that leads to so much misunderstanding and so many false accusations about conspiracies. Mr Norman Mclntyre would be well advised to look more closely into the history of the Protocols of Zion, because their birth in a novel, long before a Russian Secret Service agent produced them as evidence against the Jews, for use in his own country, is no longer seriously disputed. They were used to explain the Bolshevik revolt in Russia, but their authenticity was exploded, and even Mr Field used them gingerly, first mentioning that their authenticity was doubted, but later offering them as unchallenged fact. So far as Mr Lang is concerned, we had no wish to suggest .that Mr Mclntyre was a Langite, but when he said that he had never heard of anyone suggesting repudiation, we naturally cited a case of which he should have gleaned some knowledge from the papers. The politics of Australia, of the whole world, are of interest to New Zealanders when they provide examples of good things or bad from which it is possible to obtain lessons. Mr Lang’s proposal that private bondholders in Britain should be deprived of their interest because the British Government had not made better arrangements with the Australian Government over the war debts confused two entirely separate issues, and it was turned down flat by the conference of Premiers, representing the Labour as well as the other political parties. Neither Mr Scullin nor Mr Theodore would listen to the scheme which aimed at punishing private citizens to secure an ' advantage from the British Government. Mr Lang paid American bondholders and refused to pay British investors, though the weight of the American Government’s debt pressure on the British Government’s finances put a load of taxation on the British taxpayer, and therefore, the British investor, who had lent money to Australia, far in excess of anything the Australian taxpayer had to shoulder. In addition Mr Lang proposed a reduction of interest on all foreign borrowings, another form of repudiation. The terms of Britain’s debt settlement with America were determined by the Americans, since they were the creditors, and it is now not disputed that the Americans gave to other countries better terms than were allowed Britain. If, then, the pressure of the debt funded to Britain was heavy, in what way could the robbing of the British private investor be just? The “goods standard” of the third clause of the resolution meant the introduction of a plan the merits of which are by no means assured. In any case, the Premiers’ Conference would not listen to the scheme, and the people of New South Wales have expressed their opinion of Mr Lang. There is every reason why Mr Mclntyre, and those who think as he does, should reflect on the point that Britain, by her financial management, is now considered to be further on the way to prosperity ,than any other country in the

world. References to the tapering off in borrowing in New Zealand, a policy applauded generally, must accept the facts that when the tapering off policy was put before the country in 1928 and was backed then by indisputable evidence to show that borrowing was being tapered off, the electors (public opinion), were caught by a programme involving bigger loans. For that mistake, Mr Downie Stewart cannot be blsmed, and the “unseen assassins” cannot be exculpated, because warnings were given them, but they drew their own conclusions from their own observations and, insofar as they were able, showed that the country did not believe in tapering off. We have devoted this time to Mr Mclntyre’s ideas, because they include many that are quite commonly held, persisting in the face of very clear evidence to the contrary; but we think that the lessons supplied by Australia are not entirely lost on this Dominion.