The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, March 23, 1916. ECONOMIC EXHAUSTION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1526, 23 March 1916, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, March 23, 1916. ECONOMIC EXHAUSTION.

In an article pleading for greater economy, Mr Archibald Hurd maintains that Britain’s sea power is her greatest peril because the people are not saving, and wealth is being used up at a prodigious rate. He, says the position is of the simplest ; we must save in order to conserve our resources of money; the chief enemy, the victim of our sea-power, must spend in order to add to his. resources ot food and material for prosecuting the war. We may be confident that the economic strain will break the spirit of resistance in Germany long before we begin to reach the limit of our realisable financial resources. That confidence may be justified. On the other hand, we are opposed by a people highly organised and co-ordinated, which is making war cheaply whereas we are neither the one nor the other, and are making war most expensively. The Germans by methodical methods will make their available supplies last far longer than we could do were we in their position, and they can probably outlast economic conditions which to us would seem impossible ; we, on the other hand, are not methodical, and we are not exhibiting as a people the virtue ol thrift nor have we hitherto ordered our manhood after any carefully-thought-out plan. The enemy's peril arises from the fact that he cannot use the sea to obtain supplies ; ours from the fact that we can, and that we are abusing our sea-power, thus, if not imperilling our eventual victory, at any rate delaying it and making it far more costly than it need be.