LONDON LETTER THE CALM OF BRITAIN

Southland Times, Issue 23634, 8 October 1938, Page 6

LONDON LETTER THE CALM OF BRITAIN

Example To The World

A PEOPLE SPLENDID IN CRISIS

(From The Southland Times Correspondent)

LONDON, September 15. The greatness that is England (thanks, maybe, to Scottish and Welsh aid) comes home to the overseas visitor rin a multitude of ways: by the splendour of official pageantry; by the good-humoured patience of a London queue; by the rustic steadfastness of the country folk, who tend their flocks and till the earth after the unhurried fashion of centuries. And by the national gift of keeping cool. These are dangerous days. Europe is on edge. The whole course of history •is liable to be changed by decisions that are daily, almost hourly, expected. Mr Chamberlain has broken his holiday for a second time to return to London; Lord Halifax is not going to Geneva for the opening of the League Council; Cabinet has been summoned for Monday morning. But the British people are magnificent. “I do not think I have ever felt so pleased with my own country as I have during the past ten days,” said Harold Nicolson, MP., broadcasting on the national wave-length the other evening. “The public, while realizing the dangers and the difficulties, have remained amazingly calm. It is not the calm either of ignorance or of indifference. They know what is happening and they realize that the events of the next fortnight may. affect all that they most care for. Yet they have remained calm, resolute and unhysterical. There can be no panics, no waves of emotion, no bursts of hatred. The solid sense of Great Britain, its quiet fortitude, has been, an example to all the world. Crises ebb and flow with such incredible speed now that one man may talk to millions at once, and millions are tuned to obey one man, that the Czechoslovakian frontier dispute may either have broken in angry eruption or been absorbed back into the worlds bloodstream lorig before these words are printed. Upon this immediate point the cool-headedness of the British people may be no . longer of moment:, none the less it is well that the Dominions should know how steadily and sturdily the Homeland pulse beats for liberty, peace and. international tolerance.

WORLD TRADE Are we on the threshold of another slump? Publication this week of the seventh annual “World Economic Survey” of the League of Nations has not diverted the attention of nations from the political scene, but the conclusions reached afford food for serious thought even should the political situation be happily resolved. New Zealanders have had hitherto a special interest m the survey, because its editor was Dr J. B. Condliffe, one-time Professor of Economics at Canterbury University College. Now, although Dr Condliffe has come to be Professor of Commerce in the University of London, tlie fruits of his wide research and wise reasoning remain with the work he founded at Geneva..

The year 1937 marked a turning point from expansion to contraction. Recovery in most countries of the Northern Hemisphere was rapid until a year ago, or a little less; then the brakes came on. Economists see signs that this “pause in recovery” could be the beginning of another depression as long as, although probably less acute than, the last. The survey hesitates to pronounce one way or the other, but suggests that the events of the next few months will decide. In the second quarter of 1937 the volume and value of world trade reached for the first time the level of 1929, with the United Kingdom in the van of recovery. Since then the quantum of trade has. suffered a serious decline; the relation between prices obtained for exports and prices paid for imports has become less favourable to countries producing raw materials and foodstuffs; and balances of trade of these countries show more or less serious reductions.

On the more hopeful side attention is directed to the prospects of recovery in the United States, and to the powerful influences—notably, rearmament demand—at work everywhere to sustain the demand for goods and services. There were no similar influences m 1929. Moreover, there is “a much greater readiness among. monetary authorities and Governments to adopt prompt measures of monetary expansion and of public expenditure to offset a recession; and in the absence of a gold standard the national authorities are much less liable to be restrained from such policies by fears of their effect upon the balance of payments and the foreign exchanges.” This notwithstanding, doubt is expressed whether, in Great Britain at least, armament demand would offset a serious fall in business activity; and the general impression left with the reader is that while we may reasonably hope for the best, all of us who can would be wise to prepare for less cheerful possibilities. NAZI ECONOMICS Moving about England and Scotland one meets a remarkable number of sound democrats, of all political parties and none, who admire some of the maternal achievements of the Nazi regime in Germany almost as much as they detest its philosphy and its methods. Herr Hitler has displayed a masterly skill in blending blatant Nationalism with mild Socialism—National Socialist Party is by no means a misnomer—and when he talks to his people for their own consumption he frequently talks a simple common sense

the practice of which might prove salutary to the democracies. Thus at Nuremberg on Tuesday: For every mark more which is paid in Germany one mark more worth or goods must be produced. Otherwise this one mark which has been additionally spent remains worthless paper because nothing can be bought for it. This primitive National Socialist economic and currency policy has permitted us to keep the value—that is. the purchasing power—of the German mark stable at a time ot universal currency swindling. For the people in the town wages and salaries have meaning only if they enable them to buy the farmers’ products, and for the farmer only if he can buy for his money the products oi industry and handicrafts. ■ . National Socialism has recognized that increase of production is the only true Increase of wages. While in democratic countries wages and prices are jumping up in wild haste and their total production continually dropping. German National Socialist economy shows a steadily increasing production, a similarly ' increasing consumption, and a stable currency.

The factual accuracy of much of this may be doubted, and its propagandist purpose is obvious; but for all that it is sound, albeit simple economics. Herr Hitler would never get himself elected to Parliament in—shall we say—Alberta. \

EMPIRE EXHIBITION In the second of three visits this week to the Empire Exhibition, Queen Mary was shown round the New Zealand Pavilion, where she evinced keen interest in the displays of produce and was quick to notice features—such as a diorama of a geyser in action and a stand of travelling rugs—that reminded her of her visit to the then Colony at the beginning of the century. “That was a long, long time ago;” her Majesty said wistfully, “but I can still see your beautiful country.” / The Queen Mother acknowledged the important place in the British market of New Zealand meat, dairy produce and wool, and was attracted by the varied uses to which our sheepskins are put in interior decorating, the manufacture of fasluon “accessories,” and book binding. She examined a volume of Scott’s poems bound in New Zealand sheepskin leather. Before leaving her Majesty accepted, as a memento of her visit, the gift of a New Zealand rug, offered in the name of the Dominion by Mr J. H. Hall, Officer-in-Charge of the Pavilion. Between the opening of the exhibition on May 3 and August 31, patrons bought 494,715 samples of New Zealand produce—chiefly butter, cheese, apples, honey and tinned tongues—to a total of £9777. Considering that there are two months yet to run, this must be regarded as a very creditable set-off against the cost— £lO,OOO--of the Dominion’s participation. Takings do not, of course, actually go toward paying that cost, but to the credit of the several produce boards and freezing companies concerned in the selling, and of the Primary Produce Marketing Department. However, the substantial advertising value of nearly £lO,OOO worth of sample sales—quarter pounds of .cheese and butter:, sixpenny bags of, apples—cannot be ignored, more especially as New Zealand produce had not formerly obtained as strong a hold in Scotland as in the South and Midlands of England; To date, about 1500 New Zealanders have visited the exhibition. J

FAIRIES AT THE , CROSSROADS When Mr De Valera passed through London on Thursday, en route for the League Council meeting at Geneva, he was met at the station by Sir Harry Batterbee (soon to sail for New Zealand as British High Commissioner) with a message of cordial goodwill from Mr Chamberlain, who was engaged in discussions on the international situation. Mr Malcolm MacDonald, whose conclusion of the trade agreement with Mr De Valera is reputed to have been largely due to personal friendship founded on their common love of wild birds, was absent in Scotland as Minister-in-Attendance on the King. The friendly atmosphere attending all recent contracts between statesmen of the United Kingdom and Southern Ireland offers at any rate one heartening distinction between the present period of European tension and that of a generation ago. ' But there is more in Eire than friendliness. Where in 1914 gunmen lay in ambush, today the little people play. “Watching for fairies,” says the Irish Press, has leaped into sudden popularity in West Limerick. Boys and men are reported to have chased the fairies—“and they jumping the ditches as fast as a greyhound”—while a lad named Keely said he had actually held a leprechaun by the hand. Here in part is what the Irish Press has to say about these strange occurrences:—“John Keely, a schoolboy, seeing a fairy alone on Tuesday, ran and told the Mulqueens about it. They sent him back to interrogate the little visitor, who admitted to Keely that he ‘was from the mountains, and it’s all equal to you what my business is.’ ” Next day two fairies appeared at the crossroads between Ballingarry and Kilfinney, six miles from Rathkeals, in daylight, with skipping-ropes, and “they could leap the height of a man,” according to Robert and John Mulligan and other eye-witnesses. The little people allowed Keely to approach them and he actually took one of them by the hand and “set off along the road with him,” he said. When the fairies spotted the others lying in wait in the nearby bushes they took fright and “away they went like the wind,” with the Mulqueens, Keely and others in hot pursuit. How much more pleasant to read of this than of troop-lined frontiers and brimming powder-magazines in Europe!