The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1932. WHY NOT HONOUR?

Southland Times, Issue 21849, 28 October 1932, Page 6

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1932. WHY NOT HONOUR?

What is there to admire in the man who, pleading consideration for the welfare of his children, sees to it that the cost of his own folly is borne by someone else? What is there to applaud in a country which will smirch its honour under the plea of expediency, and use the children yet to be born as an excuse? As we have said before, it is astonishing to find how easy people to-day can talk of dodging their solemn obligations, astonishing until the effect of the State’s repudiation is realized. At the same time there are quite a number of impracticable theories put forward. Today the bond holder is unpopular. He is represented as a greedy shark, not as a small investor whose savings went into New Zealand stocks because they were safe. Those investors relied on New Zealand’s strength and honour. Now the strength has waned a little, and we are advised to discard honour, doing this to safeguard the interests of the children yet to be born. We are advised to bequeath them comfort and the heritage of broken pledges. What is the alternative? That this country shuts its lips tightly on all talk of State repudiation and realizes that it cannot in honour plead inability to pay while there remains one shilling in this country to be spent on any form of amusement, on anything but a bare necessity. In saying this we are not decrying expenditure on amusements. In times of economic depression amusements are desirable to comfort people, but it cannot be said that a beleaguered city is in extremis while it can have banquets to amuse the populace. The country is carrying a heavy burden of debt, part inherited from previous generations, part of it the weight of war, part the immediate result of post-war extravagance in response to a general clamour; but New Zealand obtained this money because she gave certain assurances on which investors relied. The cry now is: “We can’t pay!” But those who raise this wail really do not advance proof that the Dominion cannot pay, and their idea really is: “We prefer not to pay.” A wide gulf separates “can’t pay” and “don’t want to pay” and to confuse them is to give the coming generations a costly legacy. Some of the members have argued in the House, and out of it, too, that the rate of interest on the overseas debt should rise with prices and fall with them. There is no reason for believing that the State would fail to reduce the interest to bondholders when prices fell, but will the member for Invercargill or any other member in the House tell us what guarantee there is that the State will increase the interest as prices rise? What guarantee, worth the paper it is written on, can be given by a State which has shown that its pledges are brittle, that even contracts with its employees are mere scraps of paper. That phrase brings back memories of the fact that the German scrap of paper was excused by expediency. Let us still remember the scorn we felt in 1914 for the nation which regarded a treaty so lightly. Loans, with interest sliding up and down at the will of the borrower, will not be floated successfully or cheaply, and they will never be taken up if there is any doubt about the borrower’s integrity. And while consideration is given for the generations yet to be, will the repudiators explain why these sliding scale interest proposals never appear while prices are rising? They are discovered when the borrower sees he can obtain an advantage for himself. The generations to come? Let us give them a legacy of honour, not the knowledge that their parents were dishonest as well as profligate.