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Hokitika Guardian, 6 March 1923, Page 2

A private correspondent writing by the last mail from England. refers, inter alia, to the European situation, tile points of which call for so much attention in the cable news. He writes: “The fact is that Europe is so critical and so amazing at present, that our papers have room for nothing except morbid crime, domestic infelicity, and the Ruhr Valley. Such a state of tilings as we are in to-day can bo safely said to be without parallel. Our deepest hope—and fear—is that it may not issue in the wheel of time’s ievolution in another state of things, to which, even with the appalling experience of recent years, there may lie no parallel. At any rate Europe is suffering from a fever the course of which is absolutely unknown. It is as grave as pneumonia, but unlike that terrible complaint no one can draw a chart of periodicity. It is in my judgment just possible that both France and Germany may be saved by a mutual return to sanity—one to accept the limitations of victory over an exhausted nation, the other to accept the honorable responsibilities of an utterly defeated ambition. Must of us thoroughly appreciate the position in which France finds herself, and I think no one believe- that Germany has ever seriously tried to raise substantial monies to pay off her indemnity. But between putting a debtor in gaol and seeing hint spend money ostentatiously upon jewellery and furs for his wife there is a very wide gap. It is clear that there are no engineers in the world-statesmanship which can throw a. bridge of any sort—pontoon or cantilever—between the two. It looks, as in pneumonia, that the patients are going to he very much “iller” than they have become yet, and we may have to go on until the hour is so dark, that it must he the hour liefore the dawn. There may bo. I think there is. one bye-product of the situation which will turn to our good if we can keep our car steady—and it is that when all is said and done what really matters to us is the Empire. There are enough people in it, and a super-abundance of wealth and energy and good will—added to the potentialities of the Far East —which will be enough to give us trade and prosperity enough, without Germany; and there is opening enough in South America where Germany has done great trade, to give us a cocktail, before dinner may be—if we like ’em.