GREAT BRITAIN'S MANY PROBLEMS.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 41, 4 March 1937, Page 4

GREAT BRITAIN'S MANY PROBLEMS.

Here in our own little Dominion, with its million and a half of people, our politicians have very little beyond the country's purely domestic affairs to engage their attention. The only occasion they find for looking abroad is in search of marlcets for our produce, and even then their gaze is turned almost exelusively to the Motherlajid, thus still maintaining the domestic aspect. With the affairs of foreign countries, or even of the fellow dominions, they have to bother themselves little, if at all, except in a like direction. This, of conrse, is not peculiar to our present Government bufc — -except during the war — applxes to all the Governments we have ever had, and applies pretty well also to the other self-governing dominions, In contrast with this it may help to check any overweening estimate of our own importance to take a glance at some of the many world-wide problems with whieh the statesmen of the Old Country have at the moment to wrestle. In doing this we have to bear in mindThat they, too, have their domestic difficulties to contend with, difficulties that are infinitely greater than those with which we are faced here. They llkewise have got to consider the need for finding markets foi* the products of the labour of many millions of hands, and those markets they have to seek largely among foreign peoples whose Governments are placing every possible obstacle in the way. In the first place, the British Government has been forced by the threatening attitudes of -already well-armed European nations to embark upon a vast programme of rearmament that will of necessity impose a further substantial addition to the already hea.vy burden of taxation. This arises almost as much from the need for providing protection for the oversea dominions as for Great Britain itself, and yet how little those dominions are doing in the way of helping in their own defence. At the same time we have Signor Mussolini, with whom rejl'ations ean scarcely be oalled cordial, taking further steps for the thorough militarisation of the whole Italian population.. What kind of an enemy he would he likely to prove may best be guessed by the methods of "civilisation" he is reported to be applying to the conquered Abyssinians. Then we have Germany, also heavily armed, and in clo3e touch with Italy, insisting on the restoration of her colonies, with a scarcely veiled threat of taking them by force if they ^ are not returned to her. Nor, in this respect, is the situation likely to be greatly eased by the suggestion of the League of Nations Secretariat to transform colonies — no doubt mainly British — into internationally mandated territories to which all countries should have unrestricted access. * The tSnsion between Germany and France is but little, i£ anything, relaxed, and with no present prospect of success attending British efforts to bring about some better understanding among Western European Power s that would make for the maintenance of peace. It is also quite obvious that practieally the whole trouble and responsibility of seeing the agreement for non-intervention in Spain carried out is being cast upon Great Britain. On top of all these European distractions word comes from India, with its 350-million of people, telling us of how the provineial elections held there point very ominously against the acceptance of the Constitution so recently framed after so many long years of discussion. The result can scarcely but be a revival of the agitation for immediate and complete self-government with all the possibilities which that implies. These, too, are only a few — thrusting themselves upon attention through the news of the last few days — of the many problems with which the Government of the Mother Country has to deal. They .are, however, quite enough to give ns some notion as to how essentially small a part this little Dominion, so intensely proud of itself and its "independent" status, can re'ally play in the guiding of the destinies oi a great Empire.