MEETING WAR DEMANDS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 September 1939, Page 6

MEETING WAR DEMANDS.

obvious condition of the strength and wellbeing of any nation at war is that its productive and useful activities of all kinds should be maintained as nearly as possible at their normal pitch. A nation that is invaded, as Poland is today, of necessity falls back upon whatever economic plans and adjustments it can improvise in the emergency, but a country fortunate enough , to be outside the actual range of hostilities has everything to lose and nothing to gain by allowing its economic and productive activities to be circumscribed needlessly.

Two tendencies that have developed to some extent in New Zealand in these opening days of a war the duration of which has yet to be determined are equally to be deprecated in the general interests of the people of the Dominion. One of these tendencies is to cut down on purchases and to leave unbought various things that normally would be bought and would serve a useful purpose. The other tendency is to buy to excess in certain particulars, with a view to hoarding, for example, some kinds of household supplies. Both of these practices must be expected to work out badly for the community as a whole.

Those who attempt, to gain an advantage over other people by hoarding some classes of goods will soon overreach themselves and even at an immediate view the effect will be chiefly to create difficulties that need not have arisen. It is very much to the advantage of everyone that distributive trade should maintain a smooth and even flow. Hoarding, if it continued, would have to be checked speedily by positive measures of regulation.

The more important question of maintaining as nearly as possible a normal volume and momentum of trade is largely a matter for the members of the community individually and calls primarily for an exercise of common sense based on rational confidence. With war afoot in the world, trade and other conditions cannot be entirely normal, but it is in the interests of everyone that they should be made as nearly normal as possible.

People who needlessly cut down the purchases they would make in ordinary course from day to day and from week to week are simply engaging in a policy which, if it became general, not only would do no one any good, but would occasion general hardship and deprivation. The economic life of any modern community amounts largely to a mutual exchange of goods and services. An interruption of this process at any point reacts sooner or later on the whole community and if it were carried far enough would work out in mutual impoverishment.

Il is pointed out fairly by the iMastertoii Retailers’ Association in a statement, which appears today, that unless the normal volume of business is restored and maintained, unemployment and other troubles will result. The continuance of normal business conditions, as the association further observes, is essential to the economic life of the community. It is most certainly in the interests of the people of this district and those of the Dominion generally that production, trade and business of all kinds should be built up to the greatest extent that is possible. This is one way in which virtually all citizens may contribute to an effective war effort. In this matter as in others, the essential demand made is for the maintenance of firm confidence. Nothing but all-round loss and a lowering of general prosperity could be expected to result from allowing the satisfaction of normal requirements through the channels of retail trade to be restricted without cause.