World Malady and Cure

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20503, 22 August 1936, Page 12

World Malady and Cure

Under the single and unprepossessing title “A Case for Immigration,” a little book, written by Arthur Fraser and published in Wellington by the New Zealand Publishing Co., Ltd., contains, within 111 pages, a singularly acute analysis of the situation of the world to-day, an apparently new diagnosis of the root causes of the depression and its political consequences and reasoned suggestions for remedies. Only as it affects New Zealand does immigration come prominently into the picture, and on that account the title is hardly adequate to the importance of the book. The characteristic of this deep study of historic development is the closely-knit, sustained argument proceeding from the author’s research into fundamental causes. To summarise such an argument is difficult, as the author himself finds in his final chapter, entitled “Conclusions,” to

which he adds a note in the nature of an epilogue. This part of the book will be of material assistance to the reader in assembling the ideas gained by a perusal of the preceding chapters. It also presents a clear picture of the world as it is to-day, and of the influences which bear on the future of New Zealand. These are influences which make the “case for immigration” so strong. Cause of the Crisis In philosophic terms the author states his theory of the cause of the world economic crisis as due to the “disparity in the rate of change and adaptation, as it were, between the soma (body) and the psyche (spirit) of world existence.” Otherwise, “the rate of advancement on the material side of life has been too rapid to allow of the necessary changes to be made in the ethical sphere, which is, to a far greater extent, governed by human nature, itself essentially conservative and rooted to time-honoured custom.” This is restated and amplified in other passages, as for example: “The world economic crisis was the culminating point, the climax to a long struggle between the demands of material progression on the one hand and the reluctance to concede to these demands in the ethical sense on the other.” In the last paragraph in the book the author says:’’The ethical struggle has been made more arduous by the fact that since the Industrial Revolution the emphasis of philosophy has been upon the material and life has ecome vulgarised, venal, and egocentric. We surround ourselves with the cheap and tawdry and assimilate within ourselves the environmental influence of trash to the end that our outlook is selfish and myopic and has led to the misery and privation we have suffered through the years of depression. We urgently need economic security and a change in the method of thinking, two things separately the same. When we stop thinking of wealth in terms of money and measure it by our ability to satisfy the greatest number of human needs, we will have gone a long way towards restoring the balance between the quantitative and the qualitative factors of life.

NEW DIAGNOSIS OF OLD SICKNESS

New Zealand comes into the story as the victim of one-sided development imposed by a one-sided philosophy, though the author does not put it quite so crudely. Britain as the workshop and New Zealand as the farm is a theory that no longer works since the cccnomic crisis. “New Zealand,” says the author (p. 57), “is faced with the urgent necessity of increasing the amount of her exports in a world which will accept such an increase only on the basis of an equivalent increase of imports on the part of the Dominion. In other words, the bargaining power of New Zealand is considerably limited by the numerical strength of her present population. .. . The key of the situation lies in an increase of population.” Another reason for such an increase is the problem of defence, and on pages 66 and 67 will be found one of the most lucid statements of the position of the Dominion in this respect ever composed. Should New Zealand be thrown back on her own resources, he says, “with a population of only a million and a half it is difficult to see how an effective resistance could be maintained beyond a certain limited period.” Planning a Way Out The author’s plan for immigration is presented in chapter 4. Frankly, this is the least interesting part of the book, not because the plan is not a good one, but because here the intensely absorbing argument, based on past and present facts, moves off into concrete proposals for the future, which are. open to criticism as inadequate. The argument is so logically compounded that it is unanswerable. New Zealand must have more population. The author’s plan is for a land company or land companies working from depressed areas in Britain such as Newcastle-on-Tyne, Manchester, and Liverpool. The proposal is attractive enough in theory, but the working out in a New Zealand already well partitioned out in all its readily cultivable areas offers supreme difficulties. One would have preferred a large-scale immigration for bands of what were called “Imperial Pioneers” to undertake the preparation of land or other public works for a year or two before drafting into settlement. However, Mr Fraser’s scheme has some of the merits of the Bryant system in the Waikato, the most successful scheme of practical land settlement seen in New Zealand for many years. Whatever scheme is adopted, it must be on such a scale as within a comparatively few years to double the population of the Dominion. By basing the argument for immigration so broadly as he has done Mr Fraser has performed a great service for New Zealand. From a literary standpoint the exposition is masterly.