WAR DEBT PROBLEM.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20273, 6 April 1934, Page 8

WAR DEBT PROBLEM.

Mr Shaw Shows Difficulties of Payment. BRITAIN’S BUDGET SURPLUS. Per Press Association. BLENHEIM, April 5. Commenting in an interview on tne cabled reference to American reaction, as regards the war debt problem, to Great Britain’s huge budgetary surplus, Mr Bernard Shaw to-day remarked that after all a surplus of £30,000.000 was more or less inconsiderable compared with the millions Britain owed America. “If we offer to pay by the only means we have—the things we produce—the Americans say: ‘You shan’t do that,’ and promptly raise up tariffs against our exportable goods,” said Mr Shaw. “ Really we might just Keep on offering to pay that way. If we offer, say, to buy gold frem New Zealand to pay America in gold, we come up against a double refusal because America doesn’t want gold particularly, and New Zealand doesn’t want t.hc goods England produces, and with which she would buy the gold. At the present time you can’t raise mcney. “ If you want to raise thousands of millions you can only do it by undertaking not to pay it back before a certain date, and the longer that period, the better. You see, the capitalistic system stands everything on its head.” Asked what he wculd do if given an opportunity to spend the British surplus, Mr Shaw replied with the question: “Will it be - used to make things easier for the workers?” Answering it himself, he said: “No. They will want it knocked off the income tax.” Asked how New Zealand should raise any capital requirements for the future, he said: “Save it yourselves. That’s the way to do it.” If he investigated the position of many apparently independent New Zealand farmers he probably would find that they were working sixteen hours a day for some ogre of a mortgagee, in which case the farmer wou’d be better off if he were a* real black slave, because his protector would not be allowed to let him starve.