A RAY OF HOPE.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 November 1932, Page 6

A RAY OF HOPE.

The gravity of the European situation that has arisen with the rapid approach of the day for the settlement of a substantial accumulated debt to the United States has not been lightened by the news that the majority of political opinion in the States is definitely averse to the postponement of a settlement of the debts. There is, however, a ray of hope in the fact that Mr. F. D. Roosevelt, the President-elect, has arranged to give the matter immediate and careful consideration. The trend of events seems to indicate that even though the United States may be unfavourable to a straightout postponement of payment of the debts due to her she at any rate realises that something will have to be done to help the debtor nations to honour their obligations. Mr. Roosevelt, it is stated, will recommend the holding of an international conference to consider all questions of economic import. Such an object is a very wide one, but the main factors may be narrowed down, to two war debts and the fiscal policy of the United States. It comes back to the same incontrovertible logic that the States cannot expect her debtors to honour their obligations if she makes it practically impossible by raising high tariff walls against them. There is many a trader in New Zealand to-day who has been enabled to carry on and make good only by sympathetic but nevertheless wise temporary accommodation by his creditors. As with individuals so it is with nations, and it is to be hoped that the United States, for its own sake as well as for the sake of Europe, will be far-sighted enough to realise that the world cannot lift itself out of the present morass while she attempts to be a seller but not a buyer.