MEMO. ON THE PRESENT ECONOMIC CRISIS IN NEW ZEALAND.

White Ribbon, Volume 36, Issue 428, 18 March 1931, Page 4

MEMO. ON THE PRESENT ECONOMIC CRISIS IN NEW ZEALAND.

Milmiittcd to tlie Itt. Hon. (j. W. Forbes Fremier, and the Leackrg of tin* Reform and Labour Parties. This private memo, is forwarded hopefully. Mr Forbes and the Leaders ol the Reform and Labour Parties can hardly fail to recognise this crisis as one not far from war emergency, to be met only by decisions as vital rnd sweeping os war measures. The country awaits with tensity the economic conclusions of conference between the three political parties. Moreover, the more intelligent citizens recognise the moment as one for decisions economic indeed, but strangely excluded from open summary of the situation. Though only a private individual, not committed to any political party, the writer represents a large, silent, nonpartisan vote, turning always at the last to the party with the most solid programme of moral reform. The best world-economists now inevitably associate true moral reform with tiue economic reform.

Briefly, then, 1 beg to submit that the time has now come when no effective adjustments to ease a deplorable situation can possibly exclude heroic measures with regard to drink and gambling. Any scheme apart from such measures will fail the country at its need, and entail dire consequences on ourselves and posterity. The writer would entreat the Leaders to consider this not as a New Zealand crisis alone, but as a Britannic crisis, in which the same factors operate in one close, clamant Imperial necessity. is it needful to point out ho the difficulties confessed by the Chuncellor ot the Exchequer would be leasened if even £200,000,000 of the £280,000,000 now annually spent on alcohol in Britain w-ere restored to the people? Would not that tally with the proportionate result if even t*,000,000 out of the £8,500,000, tne approximate annuaf expenditure on alcohol in New Zea and, were turned to the country’s benefit? Add to that the less easily tabulated but enormous sum spent on horse racing alone, and it will be seen what a reservoir of capital true statesmanship has to draw upon in this pan-Britannic crisis, a reservoir incalculably deepened by the contingent up lift of physique, home life, an 1 morality. What lies before us if we postpone putting our house in order? Social chaos at home; facing abroad such

problems as India in revolt, with its inevitable repercussion on Africa. Competition not only with America, but with progressive lands like Germany an I Scandinavia, awake to tne alcohol menace, and meeting it with education and enactments of a more and more prohibitive cast. Deadliest of all competition with the gigantic, awaking Bowers of the East, where drunkenness has never beer the prime racial vice. If Britannic peoples are mad enough to stagger on under this incubus of a past age, what hope even for us in tin world-race now begun? JESSIE MACKAY Cashmere Bills, Christchurch, February 20, 1931.