The Te Puke Times FRIDAY, JUNE 4,1937. EMPIRE CRUSADING UP-TO-DATE

Te Puke Times, Volume 26, Issue 44, 4 June 1937, Page 2

The Te Puke Times FRIDAY, JUNE 4,1937. EMPIRE CRUSADING UP-TO-DATE

THk crusading armies of olden days, so far as we are aware, did not make open and injurious attacks upon one another in the face of the enemy. The Empire Crusaders of to-day, however, are not so squeamish, as one inay see by reference to an article of April 12 in the Evening Standard, one of the principal banner bearers of the Crusade. In that article the City Editor, Mr S> W. Alexander, a young man full of Tory vigour, makes a slashing attack on the present financial and social policy of New Zealand, where, according to him, “The advice of well intentioiied capitalists and men of business is beiDg ignored 1 ’ and “only the views of inexperienced idealists and fanatics are given any consideration. 1 ' This excursion by Mr Alexander into New Zealand party politics, though surprising, is of no particular importance and would be unlikely to trouble anybody. It is somewhat more serious, however, when, speaking from his City pulpit, he tells investors they should “not only not purchase New Zealand Government bonds, but should avoid securities of commercial enterprises dealing exclusively with that country.” Worse still,■he' goes on to suggest to his readers that there is danger of a situation developing in which New Zealand securities will be difficult to sell at 30 per cent. of their face value, That situation, the Minister, Mr Nash, is warned, can be avoided only by his accepting Mr Alexander's platitudes on economics and following his financial advice.

In no responsible English paper do we recollect anything quite resembling this attempt to injure the credit of a British Dominion, and to retard its prosperity by driving capital away-. That an Empire Crusader should select New Zealand as the object of attack is the more remarkable because, of all the Dominions, it is that which comes nearest to working for Lord Beaverbrook’s ideal of keeping its trade within the Empire. Comparisons made in this attack, between New Zealand and New South Wales under the Lang regime are particularly reprehensible, because English readers, very ignorant of the Empire over-sea, may be unaware that there is no point of resemblance between conditions in New South Wales then aUd New Zealand today. The policies of Mr Savage and Mr Lang are poles apart. Mr Lang, advocating repudiation, which he would have effected but for the controlling haild of the Commonwealth Government, reigned in a welter of unemployment, extravagance and bankruptcy, constantly aggravated by llis rule, until he was finally dismissed from office by the Governor. New Zealand, under more than a year of the rule of Mr Savage, has attained to a degree of prosperity for all classes seldom realised in the previous history of the Dominion. His policy, while, like that of all parties and Governments, legitimately open- to criticism, differs from the policy of almost all the Labour Governments the Empire has previously known, in making the welfare of the whole community, and not that of a class, its supreme objective, and in its strenuous endeavour to strengthen the links between the dominion concerned and the Mother Country. So far the “inexperienced idealists and of Mr Alexander’s imagination have dobe remarkably well.—“ The British Australian and New Zealander.”