WHY CONFERENCES FAIL.

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3190, 14 June 1932, Page 4

WHY CONFERENCES FAIL.

Sir, —There is nothing more pathetic than the way “hope springs eternal in the human breast ” in regard to conferences, only to become that “ hope deferred that maketh the heart sick.” The Disarmament and War Debts Conferences seem likely to prove a fiasco—and, indeed, how could it be otherwise, since if all the goodwill in the world were present at them it would not be brought to bear on teh root cause of the world difficulties ? “ While all the more immediate difficulties which threaten us are in the nature of technical defects, requiring for their adjustment a change of head rather than a change of heart, it is unwise to under-estimate the psychological obstacles which lie in the path of reconstruction. Probably that of fear is the most fundamental—fear of the unknown, fear of one’s neighbour.”

Here are indicated two lines of advance toward a better state of things, of which there is need to emphasise at the moment perhaps the first even more than the second. We need intelligent, and unprejudiced minds to recognise the technical defects in what is further described as "the operation of a purely artificial money and accountancy system." These are the cause of stagnation in industry, of the strange juxtaposition of a people semi-starved and destitute, with " leaders of industry in despair " because they cannot find a market for a plethora of goods. But what sort of outlook is there, or what is to be hoped from conferences, while those who attend them exhibit the mentality displayed in the utterances of Mr H. H. Stevens, Minister of Trade and. Customs in Canada, as (recorded in recent cables ? " The leaders of industry," he says, " are helpless and in despair, demanding that the Government shall find a way out. Why not find markets themselves, rather than lean on Governments to pull them out of the hole ? " Does the honourable gentleman suppose that great industrialists would not find markets if they could ? The truth is that the markets are not there, not anywhere, to find; and not because the people have no unsatisfied wants, but because " the operation of a purely artificial money and accountancy system" leaves them without the means to turn their human needs into -effective demand. Markets, in the minds of such gentlemen as Mr Stevens, seem to be conjurable out of the moon,or somewhere else, probably by a process of intensive advertising or salesmanship. But all the advertising in the world will not make people buy if they have no money; and the credit monopoly controls the money supply for its own ends. Hence one most important phase of the second kind of obstaclethe psychological. Not only does the average individual fear change—though one would think he would run out to meet it at present—but the financier, whom the present system enthrones in the seat of power and endows with the world's wealth, is not going to vacate that position easily. "It seems difficult to doubt that the efforts of those in control of the financial policy are primarily,_ if not entirely, concerned with making the world safe for bankers rathe" than with making the world safe. By one of those curious ironies which seem to be present in great crises, it happens, as one mfight say by a side wind, that the world cannot be made safe without removing the banker, painlessly or otherwise, from the commanding position which he now occupies. The alternative is, in fact clear, and nothing effective can be done to protect cMlisation from "its major r i s k s —that is, not an attack upon the power of finance." When this is realised by those who attend conferences we may look for some result from them. The power of finance as atj (present exercised is nothing less than legalised fraud. The issue must be faced. It is money versus man. —I am, etc., SOCIAL CREDIT.