The Wanganui Chronicle MONDAY, JUNE 7, 1937. A WORLD ECONOMIC CONFERENCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 133, 7 June 1937, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle MONDAY, JUNE 7, 1937. A WORLD ECONOMIC CONFERENCE

*' l ’ d ‘ efforts to bring about another World

Economic Conference reveals that he is out of touch with reality. World opinion is set in the opposite direction. The belief is held generally that an Economic Conference would avail nothing, and in view of the fate of the last World Economic Conference this belief is justified.

A great deal of work was done prior to the Economic Conference which met in London, but it was practically brought to nought because the New Deal legislation in the United States of America concentrated administrative attention upon the domestic problems of that important country and caused the American delegation to the Conference to be jettisoned. An attempt was made by the delegation itself to achieve some useful work, but it could make no progress with its own Government. Enough was attempted by the Economic Conference, however, to reveal that an assembly which represented the whole world was too unwieldly.

Since the Conference closed the international situation has deteriorated, in that Germany has consciously cut herself adrift from world co-operation, and Italy has gone a long way on the same road. Both countries have set their minds upon holding up the peace of the world in the hope of being bought off, and there is, in consequence, no prospect of these two important countries joining with goodwill in an international effort in the economic field. Japan, on the other side of the world, has only recently intimated that she is not interested in a Conference to discuss the whaling industry, and intimates that she is going full steam ahead in catching whales irrespective of the effect of her activity on the price of whale oil or upon the supply of whales. Even the United Kingdom has only recently intimated to the Scandinavian countries that she is unwilling to join a low-tariff bloc.

'1 he modus operandi now favoured is bilateral agreements. Mr. Cordell Hull, now in England in the hope of concluding' a more satisfactory trade agreement with the United Kingdom, has time and again publicly expressed himself to be against the calling of another World Economic Conference, and in favour of concluding trade agreements with individual countries. Such procedure was recommended by the Leapue of Nations Secretariat after the failure of the World Economic Conference, and it has been pursued with success by the United States of America and the United Kingdom as well.

To suggest that another World Economic Conference be called now reveals that Mr. Savage is wholly without the necessary mental equipment to sustain the role which he has been cast by a fortuitous election result.