ECONOMIC UNITY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4231, 15 January 1940, Page 8

ECONOMIC UNITY

POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION. “We must reconstruct the economic unity of Europe. Those who preached appeasement will have to face its cost—not the cession of goobets and snippets of our own or other ■people’s territory but the reopening of markets and channels of trade, with all the temporary dislocation and sacrifice -of vested interests entailed. If we as a people are not. ready to make our contribution, by re-establishing the open door in outcolonies and consenting to a system-

atic reduction of tariffs with a view to their ultimate abolition, then we must at least refrain from discouraging the rest of Europe from treading the path iof sanity; we cannot and ought not to plead the sanctity of the most-favoured-nation clause to frustrate regional and group free trade movements which are as logically defensible as Ottawa. Are we prepared to make our economic contribution at the peace conference to the prevention of a resurgent Hitlerism, and to the peacefull evolution of the other ‘isms’ by encouraging the federation •of Europe? If not, have we prepared ourselves, as we must eventually, to withdraw from Europe and have no responsibility for or share in its prosperity? Will we admit the possibility that Hitler’s violent economic integration of Central Europe, carried, out by foul methods and for unworthy purposes, might yet in the long run have achieved something without which anarchy will persist? —Sir Andrew McFadyean, in the “Contemporary Review.”