WORLD PROBLEMS.

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 19066, 3 October 1933, Page 5

WORLD PROBLEMS.

MR MILNER RETURNS.

RECEPTION BY HAMILTON ROTARY

ANGLO-AMERICAN CO-OPERATION

An enthusiastic welcome was given Mr F. Milner, rector of the Waitaki Boys' High School, in Hamilton today, upon his return from a visit to the United States of America, where he attended the International Rotary Convention at Boston and Canada. Mr Milner was accompanied by Mr T. C. List, district governor of Rotary in New Zealand. The welcome was arranged by tne Hamilton Rotary Club, and at Its invitation many prominent citizens, ineluding the Mayor, Mr J. R. Fow, and old boys of the school, were present. At the invitation of Mr H. Valder, who presided, Mr Milner gave an address on American affairs, their effect on the world, and Japan.

America To-day. Mr Milner said he felt that his littlo preliminary effort at Boston had been so magnified and idealised that he had become “a peripatetic myth and a perambulating legend.” Some of them no doubt regarded America as a land of gangsterdom, racketeering, lynching and general indiscriminate criminality. Others regarded it as a land of materialism and utilitarianism, others again as a land of isolation and Intense nationalism. He hoped 1° show that there was another and a very different side to the American people. No man could live long with the American people without realising the underlying stratum of idealism in their personality. It was to that idealism that he had made his appeal, and the response was electric and lasting. Describing the visit which he and Mr List paid to President Roosevelt, he said the President had a wonderful smile. Suffering from the grievous disabl.ity of being paralysed from the waist downward, he will not allow any sympathetic reference or commiseration on his ailment. He dominates his disability by sheer power of the spirit. One cannot but be Impressed with the radiancy and the buoyant spirit of the man.”

A Note of Confidence. For the old spirit of rugged individualism there w - as now substituted collectivist direction or regimentation by the President. Wherever MiList and he went they found the same unanimity of spirit in endorsing the National Recovery Act scheme for the elimination of unemployment. Roosevelt had said that what the people needed was confidence and a feeling of security and that he was going to give that to them. From one end of the country to the other one now found a note of confidence that was not there prior to June of this year. The President had his finger on the pulse of the nation. If the National Recovery Act did not win through—and nobody could tell at the..present juncture—there was such abundant confidence in America, such inventiveness, such 1 .- source, such abandonment of old mental’ traditionalism and ability to scrap fossilised ideas, and such marvelio industrial organisation and matei endowment that the people would win through and set a tonic example to the world.

Anglo-American Co-operation. Mr Milner wondered where any stability was to be found except in the British Empire and the great Republic of America. It was said that democracy had failed, but America f was showing that democracy had got ' a way, with full constitutional safe- ‘ guards, to direct and positive action.

He did not think that democracy was going to fall. He did not think that any other type of government was going to satisfy the American people or the British people. His message was that these two great branches of Eng-lish-speaking people must function together.

Mr Milner said he was convinced that a large section in America wanted closer co-operation with other countries. Personally, he had endeavoured to impress his American hearers with the truth that Britain and the United States together held the world in her hands, and that America's discredited Isolation policy had been honoured many times in the breach as well as in the observance, from revolutionary days to the present.

Japan’s Need for Expansion. An urgent appeal to his fellowcountrymen to realise the Immediate necessity for dealing by suitable international action with Japan’s need for economic expansion was made by Mr Milner.

Mr Milner confessed that he had come back from the Banff conference on Pacific relations a disappointed man. He was disappointed because he had striven for many years to impress upon teachers the need for a more generous and charitable understanding of the Japanese. For a long time he had considered that they had been traduced and maligned. Now we had the statement from General Araki, the Japanese Minister of War, that Japan had got nothing out of her idealism and internationalism. They had turned their backs on idealism and a new era of realism was replacing it

“I have to confess,” continued Mr Milner, “that there is a real menace l_ a really sinister aspect of the problems that are now being envisaged on the far side of the Paeitle, I do n ot want to be an alarmist, but I want to toll you that this naval race on noth sides of the Paeitle is indicative of a tremendous tension of feeling. There is not only the tremendous clash of feeling and of policies in regard to the ‘open door,’ hut there is the urge that comes from the enormous increase of .Japan's population.’’ It had to he. realised that instead of Manchuria having an inexhaustible supply of coal and iron suitable for japan’s needs, the reverse was the case The Japanese had to go furl her afield for these vital necessities for their industrial lift'. Japanese tin an - ciers already controlled some of the most- important, coal and iron deposits in British Malaya and India, and were conducting comprehensive surveys for further supplies even up to the coasts of Australia.

The speaker went on to say that 2,100,000 babies wero born in Japan in a single year, and even if births were to cease altogether now, there would remain the problem of finding employment in the next 20 years for 10,000,000 workers. The Japanese were not a migrating people and there was no way of finding employment for these vast millions except through industrialism. An Acuto Position.

The Japanese were intensely ambitious, and were badly led by the militaristic party. They simply con'd not control the forces now in action. Raw materials must be found to maintain their industrialism. They said they must have access to the Indian market, and that it was a matter of life and death. If denied access to raw materials by negotiation, they declared, they would get it by force. The position was far more acuto now than if had been in 1920 and 1021. Even the New Zealand Government should get to work and make its representation to the British Government that ttie British and American Governments should again get together before it was too late. No question was going to be more alive and vital than this in the course of the next year, and there was a growing need for the collaboration of British and American statesmanship on the. lines which had been so fruitful and beneficial to the world in avoiding disaster in 1920-21,