The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. Gloucester Street and Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALAND. FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 1932. BRITISH INFLUENCE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 364, 4 March 1932, Page 5

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. Gloucester Street and Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALAND.

FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 1932. BRITISH INFLUENCE.

London Representatives! R. B. BRETT & SON MEW BRIDGE HOUSE, 30/34 NEW BRIDGE STREET LONDON. E.C.4.

ONE RESULT of the improved financial situation in London must be that British influence will carry full weight when international problems—war debts, reparations and disarmament—are discussed at coming conferences. These are the dominant questions of the day, affecting people of all classes in all corners of the earth, and it would be tragically unfortunate if, for any reason whatever, the level voice and sage advice of Downing Street came to be regarded as of secondary importance compared with the voice and advice of wealthier but more impetuous neighbours. Reparations and war debts still hang like a black cloud over the economic life of the world, and international action towards a settlement of the problems could be prejudiced only too easily by a false step dictated by fear, pride, or racial enmity suddenly blazing forth. Pacifying British influence steadily exerted is of paramount importance in a situation of extreme delicacy. If reparations and war debts are cancelled or drastically revised, economic and political confidence will speedily return, bringing in its train prosperity and harmony. If the debtor nations are forced to take refuge in bankruptcy and repudiation, the whole European system must collapse. THE WRECKER. T TEED NOT the beacon of the wrecker. Under the stress of the economic storm, the Trades and Labour Council in Auckland has been talking strike as a protest against the sweeping changes that are being made in the Arbitration Act. If the results of the Government’s policy in this matter are what a great many thinking men sincerely believe they will be, there are sure to be problems enough to solve without adding the insuperable difficulties of strike tactics. The strike is the policy of desperation, the ultimate appeal to force, the expression of the primitive instinct that essays (and invites) destruction. Are earnest men to mortgage in moments of madness that very opportunity for clear thinking and calm judgment that the situation imperatively demands? Is reason to yield to frenzy? Brains, not brawn, can provide the medium of escape. The strike denies expression to brains and expresses only brute force. IN GANGSTERLANB. A MERICA has given us this, because only America could: “ Gentlemen,” declared a member of the House of Representatives, addressing Congress, “ what we need is to put red blood in our veins, and determine before God Almighty that we are to make this country safe. We have been permitting to grow up a super-government that levies tribute on the people and threatens to burn out the eyes of their children if they do not pay.” It is one of the many expressions, apropos the Lindbergh kidnapping case, that illustrate how the Americans seek to meet with rhetorical hyperbole what a British system would meet by calling in a reliable policeman. No other nation in the world seems so prodigal of talk and so sparing of effective action. No other nation in the world demands so much of poetic metaphor to praise a freedom and a culture that meet more menaces from lawlessness daily than threaten the British equivalents in months. The politician mouths thread-bare platitudes of America’s inspiration to world civilisation while the gangster levies toll and the gunman stalks through the streets. Public spokesmen call all the aid of rich superlative to the praise of law and order, and nobody seems to hear the mocking echo of the bootlegger’s laugh. Is any other country in the world so blind to those things in itself that arc so plain to those who look on from without?