The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 1933. ECONOMIC CONFERENCE.

Hokitika Guardian, 16 January 1933, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 1933. ECONOMIC CONFERENCE.

It is so generally agreed that the difficulties under which all civilised nations are labouring spring from worldwide causes, and that only international co-operation of the most extensive character offers any hope of effective remedy, that the holding of a would economic conference, for which the preliminaries are announced, scams like action long delayed. iv has been talked of for long enough, but the machinery to fashion it has worked slowly. Many forces are admittedly at work to hamper the progress of international trade, to block the smooth flow of commodities, to reduce the ‘process of exchanging them to mere day to day transactions without continuity or the power of growth. How far the conference that is being prepared for can rectify those conditions depends upon the degree of goodwill brought to it, and the extent to which the parties represented realise what i.s involved. Economic nationalism, grown immeasurably in strength and aggressiveness since the war, is charged, not unreasonably, with being the prime cause of industrial and commercial stagnation, the chief brake on the proo-resis of recovery. Unless those nations attending the conference are prepared to yield something of their previous determination to live to themselves, so far as possible, there i;« little prospect of useful results. The chief hope, comments a northern writer, is that depression, worldwido in scope and crushing in its weight, has taught the world the lesson it needed. That, and something definite done . toward a (solution of the war debt problem, .are the two essentials to a hopeful opening of the conference. The emphasis placed in comment on the hopele«enrss of a conference if the war debts question bangs over it like a shadow" is no exaggeration of the facts, The LansanPe.Conference, which brought new hone to Europe, has been neutralised by the miasmic influence of the war debts. So wiM the economic conference be unless that influence is removed. F'or that reason events in the next few months, when a settleI ment must he ranched if it is to be in time, will he of vital moment in the history of the immediate future.