The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 1931. DOMINION’S WAR DEBTS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 143, 18 June 1931, Page 8

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd.

THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 1931. DOMINION’S WAR DEBTS.

Gloucester Street end Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH / NEW ZEALAND. Ltadoa RepneatoiiTmi R. B. BRETT & SON m BRIDGE HOUSE. 30/34 new bridge street LONDON. LCA

* I 'HE SUGGESTED moratorium "*■ for war debts, if put into operation, would affect the budget appropriations of all the British Dominions to an appreciable extent, and a recapitulation of the sums owing to Great Britain on account of war expenditure is therefore of interest. The greatest amount is owing by Australia, for at June 30, 1929, the total outstanding was £82,790,481, which is to be extinguished in twenty-five years by annual payments of £5,550,000. These payments have recently been postponed for two years to assist Australia to recover her financial position. New Zealand comes next, the balance of war debts owing to the British Government at March 31, 1930, amounting to £24,747,342. The annual payments are £1,651,930, funded on an annuity basis of 6 per cent, and the debt will be automatically discharged at the end of the 1958-9 financial year. Neither Canada nor South Africa would benefit by such an arrangement as has been suggested, for in Canada’s case £12,000,000 was the only amount borrowed from Great Britain for war purposes during the whole period of the war, and in South Africa the total overseas debt for all purposes increased between 1914 and 1919 by less than £14,000,000, so that in both cases no arrangement was necessary. As Australia already has been granted a postponement of payment on account of war debts, only New Zealand would benefit by being relieved of the annual payment of £1,651,930 for two years, but this would be very acceptable at the present time, without aggravating the seriousness of Britain’s own budgetary problems.

A MAGISTERIAL IDEA.

' I "'HE SENIOR city Magistrate, in his walks abroad, has been watching taxi-drivers, and he finds that a great many of them indulge in dangerous driving. That conclusion might well be come to by the average citizen in respect to motorists generally, and it suggests the necessity for a concentration of traffic inspectors, not on the routine affairs of traffic control, but on the eradication of offences that have an element of danger in them. The average man, walking to and from his work once a day, sees three or four glaring traffic breaches in the course of a week, a very common offence being the refusal of heavy lorry drivers to give way on their right. A motor inspector, preferably in plain clothes, might detect fifty cases of dangerous driving in a week, and a short, sharp campaign against such offences would be salutary, and would also be profitable, from a revenue-producing point of view.

A WORD FOR LANDLORDS

OO MANY LANDLORDS in hard k ' times have to carry unemployed tenants in the matter of rent that the old feeling of hostility towards them is dying out. Sympathy for an evicted tenant is not as warm to-day as it used to be, when repression and rack-renting were common, and very little public sympathy will go out to the Communistic crew who defied the police in Sydney. The harsh landlord is not a thing of the past, hut in Christchurch a verylarge number of worthy and not wealthy people, who own houses for letting, and in some cases depend entirely on the rents for their living, have had to accept substantial reductions, or no rent at all, because their tenants are out of work. Rentals generally are high enough, hut it is only fair to say that many small landlords make a far larger contribution to the maintenance of the unemployed in this matter than is equitable, and when it is considered that arrears of rent have often to be written off, it is as well not to be harsh in our judgments on this subject, however much an occasional eviction may tend to arouse angry passions against the landlord class.