WORLD IN CRISIS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19829, 19 June 1934, Page 7

WORLD IN CRISIS

PROBLEMS OF THE TIMES NOT A MENACE OF DOOM “No one to-day will question the statement that the world is in a crisis, which has been brought about by an accentuated state of transition, painful in many ways, and certainly disconcerting and disturbing, which differs from any other in the universality of its scope and effects,” declared Dr. F. W. Norwood, of City Temple, London, speaking on “The World in Crisis” at the Dunedin Town Hall on Saturday evening. Dr. Norwood said it embraced the whole globe. The entire civilised world was in crisis, and did not like it. The majority feared it with a keen personal fear, and many more could not understand it or account for it, but he stood before them that night as one who welcomed the crisis for its own sake, as one who saw no evil in the crisis itself, but only in the effect it might possibly have on the world it was at the moment disrupting. He would go so far as to say: “Heaven’s blessing on the crisis,” because in it resided an opportunity and an incentive for the world to realise its mistakes and its shortcomings, its pettiness and its blindness, and finally to free itself of the shackles cf past blunders and past failures. Influences Outside Europe. “Alter 17 years in old and powerful Europe,” said Dr. Norwood, “I am beginning to suspect that there is a great deal to be learnt about world trends and world conditions away from Europe’s shores. It recently occurred to me that the back premises of the world played an important part in world affairs, and I suddenly conceived a desire to visit the ends of the earth and see for myself what part these countries are playing in the great drama of modern history. And I am convinced that they occupy a place of the utmost importance in the world affairs. In their growing pains are to be found some of the root causes for the Old World’s tribulation; and in their crises, which are only reflexes of the greater world crisis, are to be discovered a lot of reasons for the conditions that exist in the older countries at the present time. It is because of that conviction that I am going to take you through some of these back premises of the world now and endeavour to show you where their crises had their birth,”

One thing that they should bear in mind in considering all the new countries of the world was the basic fact that there was scarcely a part of the world to-day where the domination of white civilisation was not feared and resented by the coloured peoples of the earth. This had caused and was causing a crisis, and it was his view that the world should be glad of such a crisis—should welcome it with open arms—even if the white civilisation had been shaken by it. They should all be thrilled to think that a civilisation based on the subordination of the greater proportion of the world’s population was wincing because millions of people of the subject races of the world were reaching up for a larger share of life than they had been afforded in the past.

Pressure of Tariffs. Discussing Japan, Dr. Norwood said that it had the advantage of being a homogenous entity, insular “like happy New Zealand,” comfortably surrounded by water, and ambitious. How much jealously had this little country aroused! The great Elizabethan maritime age was regarded as the most glorious chapter in British history, but the present maritime period in Japanese history was nothing of the sort. Oh, no! It was a world menace. Japan stood aloof, almost friendless, and it was for that reason that she wanted a foothold in China. Her attempts to expand were simply the efforts of a great country to achieve her own destiny. Japan took a lot of Australia and New Zealand wool, and people found in that a cause for whispers. “She wants it for the manufacture of explosives” he was told very confidentially in Sydney, and he had had to laugh. The damnable war system had made lunatics of them all, and everything was being twisted into a war scare, simply because Japan by taking white civilisation when it was brought to her, copying it and using it to her own advantage, had found for herself a central place in world affairs as one of the Great Powers. One of the reasons why Japan was so universally hated was that she could make things so cheaply. If one thing annoyed the white man more than another it was to have a foreigner selling him something at a lower rate than he could produce it himself, and that feeling started war scares and war fears more quickly than anything efce. The only thing to do was build up barriers, hem oneself in with tariffs, and shut oneself off from the world. Would the world never see the pity of it? Japan did not sell cheaply because she wanted to, but because she had to. Tariffs made her do it. Would they never learn to look at the whole question of tariffs from an international point of view? Could not even a little country like New Zealand tackle the problem nationally instead of making the whole business a wrangle between sectional interests?