The Christchurch Star. PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1932. EXCHANGE ANXIETIES.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 326, 20 January 1932, Page 6

The Christchurch Star. PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1932. EXCHANGE ANXIETIES.

AUSTRALIA’S financial embarrassment must always constitute a threat to New Zealand in the matter of exchange rates, and that fact is significant in a discussion as to whether exchange should be pegged or allowed to find its own level. Australia requires a surplus of £30,000,000 to pay her interest bills, and in the next two years has £118,000,000 of debt falling due in Australia and overseas. Credit must be obtained somewhere. Mr Lyons says that the Australian banks arc carrying the State Governments on until the end of February, but that after that the Loan Council will have to face the problem of raising £8,500,000 for public works. The trouble with Australia is that her credit abroad has gone, and her present desperate need of money justifies the defensive action of New Zealand in creating an exchange pool in London for the protection of New Zealand balances, which might otherwise be diverted to Australia’s requirements because of the discount of 30 per cent that is now payable on Australian currency. Australia requires reserves in London not only to pay for her imports and her interest bills, but to make provision against the periodic droughts that dam up the flow of her exports. The position is fraught with danger to New Zealand, whose credit is unfortunately linked with Australia’s by geographical proximity, but it emphasises the lack of an Imperial policy of banking and currency organisation, and the need for a central bank in the Dominion. WHAT’S IN A NAME? IT SHOULD NOT BE LOST upon those who are advocating the abolition of the wing forward in Rugby in New Zealand that the manager of the Springboks has just been telling the English governing authorities there that “ there would be a general improvement in back play, if referees were more strict in curbing the wing forwards.” There is more than an implication in that statement that the wing forward is an institution in English Rugby, and that the greatest offence we are guilty of in New Zealand is not in playing a wing forward—for the British team in New Zealand played two wing forwards—but in labelling him as such. New Zealand, in fact, has done a distinct service to Rugby in demonstrating the more scientific possibilities of the game, and whatever the legislators may agree upon, nothing is more certain than that the wing forward, however he may be disguised, has come to stay, and it would be a matter of common honesty to admit it. THE FLAVOUR OF LAMB. TT IS A NICE POINT whether it is a greater loss to Charles Lamb or to us that he lived in an England that knew not lamb as we in New Zealand know it. For we who spend £17,000 in England in advertising our product as the best in the world really have something to offer to provoke the appetite and the muse. Had a portion of this roast lamb found “ a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach ” of the epicurean Lamb, he would surely have written an essay op its culinary virtues outrivalling his famous “ Dissertation upon Roast Pig.” There is confessedly some self interest in our regret at what he missed, for literary friends would have eagerly tasted Prime Canterbury again on the tongue of the essayist, and publicists would have paid heavily for that “ premonitory moistening ” on the nether lip that his succulent recollections provoke. But since it is now too late for these imaginings, let us give to the teeth the enjoyment of the crisp, sweet fat of to-day’s dinner, flood the tender meat with gravy and mint sauce, dish it with new potatoes and green peas and let our grace be that every English household may taste the sweetness of New Zealand lamb.