THE OUTLOOK

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 116, 19 May 1933, Page 10

THE OUTLOOK

MOST URGENT PROBLEM THE CHOICE OF EVILS RARE WISDOM NEEDED. In his presidential address at the annual Synod of the Wellington diocese of the Church of England, Bishop Sprott dealt at some length with the subject of the world outlook, and then referred to the problems now being faced by New Zealand. “Looking at our own country,” said Bishop Suprott, “I confess I do not sec any clear sign of better days. Our greatest and most urgent problem, unemployment, seems to bo as far from solution as ever. I do not think the number of unemployed has been appreciably lessened, and winter is fast approaching. (During the past few months drastic legislation has been enacted. Seldom has any legislation been so hotly contested or so widely criticised—criticised not by the more or loss ill-informed multitude, but by able men, expert in the matters dealt with. I, who am not an expert in such affairs, do not presume to decide on which side the greater wisdom lay. “The legislation is now in force, and all people of good-will must earnestly hope that it will bring to the country the benefit it was designed to bring. No doubt it has brought, or will bring, relief to many; but I think that, looking at the country as a whole, the relief given is in part delusive. I mean that in. part it has meant little more than the transference of the burden from vne set of shoulders to another set of shoulders, little, if at all, more able to bear it. The notion which is floating about that all the people who invest money are people of large means, who, after all curtailments and deductions, have still an ample or at least a sufficient margin left, is, of course, ridiculous. The fact is that large numbers of investors arc people of small means, who, through long years of work and careful living, have managed to save a few hundreds or have acquired a little house property as a provision for old age. In the best of times these people have but a narrow margin; in such times as these it altogether disappears. I mention this because I think the special hardship of such people has not been sufficiently recognised. They for the most part do not loudly complain, and so do not receive much sympathy. The Public Credit. “Again, one cannot help feeling that the public credit may have been imperilled. Credit is founded upon confidence on the one hand and trustworthiness on the other. It is a fragile structure, and may be more easily broken down than restored. It would be a disaster of the first magnitude if the traditional feeling regarding the bindingness of contracts should became permanently weakened in the general mind. I mention these matters not because I imagine myself to be able to show a more excellent way of dealing with the present distress by which they could have been avoided. In the emergency they were perhaps inevitable. It is possible that we have got into one of those unhappy situations which not seldom occur in this tangled world, where men are hemmed in to a choice of evils. Fault for Plight. “Sometimes —I do not say always—this severe limitation of choice is due to some previous misdoing or folly. 1 believe it is so, at least to a considerable extent, in our present evil plight. 1 do not fargot that we are involved in a world calamity which is beyond our control. Still I believe that, to a .greater degree than wo like to admit, our plight is due to our own fault. Just think! Here we arc, a community numbering 1,50(1,000 all told. We owu a country won for us by the patient endurance of privations, the bravo defiance of dangers, by the early pioneers, long since forgotten. It is a country of great natural resources capable of maintaining a much larger population. It is also a country with a climate which, notwithstanding its vagaries, conduces to a somewhat pleasure-loving life. We discovered that money could bo borrowed in abundance. We borrowed freely. I do not say that this money, so easily acquired, was wholly misspent, but I believe much of it was. In all the luxuries and amenities of life we would raise our sparsely populated and undeveloped country to a level which it took older countries centuries to reach. I believe not a little of the borrowed wealth was utterly wasted. This might have been all very well if national prosperity were a constant quantity, subject to no fluctuations. “We were,” said Dishop Sprott, “unheedful of one of the most certain lessons of history—perhaps we imagined that the past had nothing to teach a young democracy in a new country —the lesson that, as the natural year has its seasonal changes, so likewise the greater year of national history; that sooner or later there come—there must come—times when rains descend, and floods come, and winds blow and beat upon the house of a nation’s life; and' then, if that house bo illfounded or carelessly built, it must fall, and the crash is great. As yet that last stage of calamity has not. befallen us: but I suspect that, if we knew all, we should discover that we had been nearer to it—perhaps are still nearer to it—than we thought, or think. Well were it if we should lay to heart the lesson before it is too late. We need—imperatively need—to consider our wavs ”