AN AMERICAN ON BRITAIN

Hokitika Guardian, 22 January 1926, Page 3

AN AMERICAN ON BRITAIN

•CHEERFUL VIEW. LONDON, November 28. Mr C. W. Barron, proprietor of the “ Wall Street Journal,” and other American publications, has cabled, for publication in America to-day, a reply to Mr George Harvey’s recent article in the " North American Review,” in which the late American Ambassador in London painted a gloomy picture of Great Britain’s future as an industrial and commercial power.

Mr Barron, after referring to the British arguments used in the conversations with Air Harvey before the debt settlement writes:

Evidently the arguments against which Mr Harvey combated have had a strong after-effect upon his mental vision. But Mr Harvey should have delved deeper into British finance. You cannot safely take the Englishman at his own depreciated valuation.” The following are among the salient passages in Mr Barron’s statement: “ The main contention of Air Harvey would he laughable if the discussion of it were not in danger of taking 011 a serious international aspect. Before writing the doom, of Groat Britain, burdened by a mountain of debt, Afr Harvey should have had a clearer solution for this problem: How can a man go broke by writing his own notes, payable only to himself? The war cost the three big successful Powers each forty billion dollars and more later. The United States and Great Britain laid on the taxes arid have to date paid a large part of the cost—the United States nearly one-half and Great Britain several billions. France looked to Germany to pay and now must sutler, to use the language of her now Finance .Minister ' taxes infernal.’ ” BUT BRITAIN PAYS IT ALL.

" (treat Britain pays three hundred million pounds, or a billion and n-half dollars, to her own subjects as interest on her war bonds, and a good measure of this she takes hack in taxes. But lief total d<djt service is not one-half her government expenditure. She has a budget of eight hundred million pounds or nearly four billion dollars. This is much greater than that of the United States.

" But she collects it all. and il she has a deficit this year it will he only because she lias elected to pay twenty million pounds, or a hundred million dollars, to subsidise her coal interests while she talk's time to solve the proidem of her fuel supply and throw the Bolsheviks out of the country.

“ England Was the great war stillerer. She had most to lose in trade, shipping, coal and manufacturing. But in seven years alter the war. she has balanced her budget, advanced the pound sterling by fifty per cent, to its parity with the U.S. gold dollar, settled Ireland and thrown over free trade.

“ Anu*ric:m motors arc not in ( ' v,_ deuce on English highways as they were a few years ago. Her motor companies. under n thirty-three per cent, protective tariff have sprung lo the front anil are putting two thousand motors upon the English highways every week. Certainly, from the American standpoint, this is not any evidence ol Empire decadence.

"This Empire has not only fourfifths of the rubber and all the nickel that goes into our American motor-cars but slit* manufactures at a profit both the lowest priced and highest priced motor-cars in the world. " Capital is abundant in Kghuul and expanding. Blast furnaces are being relighted ; pig iron production and steel production are increasing. England does not tax incidental profits arising from enhanced values. Then more than a billion dollars made the past year by the advance in rubber shares will go untaxed and will add to the capital of the country. " There are many factors in English progress. Chief among them are capital. labour, confidence and security, with wise administration, hi everyone of these elements England is today making progress. Her troubles are behind her. Her standards are set. She is confident of herself and her position.”