The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1946 Dear Sir,

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 45, 4 November 1946, Page 4

The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1946

Dear Sir,

Letters to the Editor must be clearly written on one side of the paper only and where a nom-de-piume is used the name of the writer must be included for reference purposes. The Editor reserves the right to abridge, amend or withhold any letter or letters.

YOUTH ON A PEDESTAL

Sir, —The note struck in the leader of' the Beacon of 20th, to my mind brings forward a subject which has long demanded serious reflection —Youth on a Pedestal. The general attitude of acceptance for all and sundry youth organisations no matter how praiseworthy the object behind them has grown to such an extent that it has become more or less a fetish. '

Apart from the fact that these various clubs can be the means of occupying every, night of the lives of growing youth, the repercussions on the home and on the parents, only dimly, sensed in the. last generation are beginning to manifest themselves very definitely at the present one. Parents no longer worry about the activities of their children therefore they can shelve any lingering qualm of conscience they may have had at the outset regarding them. The children are at this or that club —someone else is training and instructing them—ergo—Father and Mother can go to the pictures, or there's always a game of bridge or billiards ready to hand. The gradual encroachment on the family life has passed unnoticed until now it has grown out of all proportion, and unless parents become more conscious of it, the home will be in the definition of Albert Hubbard: "A place where one sleeps and cleans ones teeth."

Youth Clubs are all to the good, but even such commendable movements can be overdone. There is a risk too of regimentation of ideas, leaving youth no leisure nor inclination to cultivate originality of ideas or that precious gift of imagination which 'is at its best during this period. All the best this world has given us, has come from men who had leisure to indulge in what our hard boiled generation calls "dreaming" their > inspiration was not culled in clubs but in the quietude 'of the family leisure circle. Yours etc., * 'OBSERVER.'

s.o.s.

Sir, —This is a call from the 'British people.' Those who have a tendancy to believe that the British have become a back number, when reading these figures should take heart. These figures are taken from the League of Nations 1938. Total area (Sq. Kilometres) British Empire 34,300,000; U.S.A. , 9,700,000; U.S.S.R. 21,180,000. Population: British. Empire 534,90,000; U.S.A. 145,700,000; U.S.S.R. 169,000,000. Imports, Exports, Dollars: British Empire 13,867,000,000; U|S.A. 5,594,000,000; U.S.S.R. 525,000,000. It will be seen that the British Empire has more area, more population and far greater volume of imports and exports in trade than the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. put together. Isn't this an unanswerable argument in favour of

our retention of the system of imperial preference, against which such a concentrated attack is being made today? As a business proposition, the British Empire is an asset which far exceeds in value any other economic unit in the world. ■This fact is well recognised in the U.S.A. for Mr Byrnes, Secretary of State, on the 16th April, in supporting the loan to Great Britain said that no other country could channel half the world's trade in its own direction by.bilateral argreements..He intimated that in return for the loan, Great Britain (the Socialist Government) had agreed to renounce'bilateral agreements, and the signing of that agreement put the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. into one category and would regulate the' British Empire to another (a most insidious*plan). This plan provides that all member nations are to have access to all customs, territories or other member nations on identical terms without discrimination. It further says that where a member nation has more than one customs territory under its jurisdiction, each separate territory shall be considered a separate member for the purpose of the agreement. This means that the U.S.A. with its 48 member States and its island possessions, all being one customs territory, behind one customs tariff, will continue to enjoy Free Trade and unlimited preference. Also the U.S.S.R. with its 16 Republics and now other controlled countries such as Yugoslavia, Rumania, etc., will maintain Free Trade among themselves and Closed Trade to outsiders. Britain and her Empire, separated by sea, each component part having its own customs tariff, would come under separate national clauses, bound to treat alike imports from all sources, irrespective of other parts of the Empire. The result of this ingenious planned device would be a knockout blow to the entire system of imperial preferences. This is not a question for Party Governments, as they are split on the Bretton Woods Pact, so it must be the people who should decide as to whether they should sign this warrant of economic serfdom, or stand for British Freedom.

Yours etc., W. BRADSHAW,

BRETTON WOODS

Sir, —We have Professor Simkin as an economic expert and adviser to our present Government, speaking on behalf of the Bretton Woods Pact. And when condemning the opponents of the scheme in an address to Rotary (Herald 1/9/46), he said: The opposition view that the fund, not only involves a return to gold; but the restoration of gold in a more rigid form than before, is at variance with the judgments of those with expert knowledge. In other words he and his brother experts of the London School of Economics (I presume he is a student of the Columbo University, New York) are to be the Directors of Economic Finance on behalf of their masters. But this scheme for totalitarian dictatorship, and world-wide economic servitude has got to be exposed. He says: The membership in the fund did not involve a return to the gold standard? Not as we knew it, but to represent a controlling base of value on dollar exchange. He speaks of the ignorance and malice, of the attacks on the U.S.A. This is sidetracking the. issue as when we speak of countries, we must not be confused with the financial control of those countries! Undoubtedly the people of the U.S.A. could do bet-