SOLID STRENGTH

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 44, 20 January 1938, Page 16

SOLID STRENGTH

BRITAIN'S PROGRESS, THE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK. LONDON,. Dec. 12. The strength of Great Britain’s economic position 'was stressed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Simon, at a National Government demonstration at Nottingham recently. In the areas where the depression had been most persistent, he said, there had been a further reduction of 25 per cent, in the unemployment figures compared with those of the previous year. “In the country as a whole,” Sir John said, “we have seen the total of insurable persons now actually employed mounting to higher totals. Industrial activity, the increase in national savings, the productivity of revenue, are reassuring signs. .If there has been some fall in security values and in certain commodity prices, that does not justify malignant pessimism. This country is, in fact, economically strong, and its recent history has shown with what firmness it can resist economic shocks and how great is its recuperative power. “REASONABLE CHEERFULNESS.”

“Our recovery from the depths of one of the most appalling trade depressions that the world ha 6 ever known is a solid fact, and the health of our industrial life, like the health of a human being, partly depends on maintaining a reasonable cheerfulness while keeping a watchful eye on any warning symptom. Just as panic helps to induce collapse, so steadiness of outlook is a real contribution to maintaining better times. Some foolish or excited people, miscall this attitude ‘complacency,’ forgetting that those who enjoy themselves so much in predicting disaster are only helping to create the atmosphere of depression.

“If indeed we were at some time in the future called upon to face a trade decline, we are in a far better position to meet it and deal with it than we were in the great collapse of 1931. Six years ago, in the depths of the slump, this country was unable to protect itself against an influx of goods thrown at us at cut-throat prices by foreign producers, who were at their wits’ end to dispose of them. Our whole economic system was thereby thrown completely out of gear and emergency measures had to be devised at short notice in an effort to redress the balance. SYSTEM OF PROTECTION. “We have now got the protection of a carefully devised find rapidly adjustable tariff system, applied to selected imports with a view to protecting the homo market without unduly blocking healthy flow of trade.” The policy of the Government in international affairs, Sir John added, was first and foremost that of promoting .peace by every means in our power. “We deplore the horrible fratricidal conflict which is going On in Spain,” he said, “but we are confident that the practice of non-intervention from outside, which we have done our utmost to sustain, continues to be the method best calculated to limit and shorten the conflict. .... “In the Far East Britain has great material interests, but here, too, our greatest interest is peace, and, in spite of the Brussels Conference, peace seems far away. The League of Nations, which was designed to be a League embracing all the States of the world and speaking with universal authority, manifestly_ cannot exercise the authority it was intended to possess when three great States stand outside it.” FRIENDSHIP WITH UNITED STATES. There were manifest signs of fruitful efforts on both sides of the Atlantic to foster and promote the most friendly relations of good understanding between the United States and Great Britain, Sir John continued. Nothing would contribute more effectively to the ultimate foundations of world peace than the preservation and promotion of that good understanding. Preliminary discussions had now gone far enough to justify negotiations being opened for a trade treaty with America. There could be no doubt that the influence and authority of Britain in world affairs had been powerfully reinforced by the progress of the defence programme. There was no foreign country which imagined for one moment that British expenditure on armaments was designed for any purpose of aggression. However, the indefinite piling up of armaments bv all the States of the world, with its appalling consequences to finance and to standards of civilisation, was no end in itself. If the future of the world was to he nothing but an endless armament race, its inhabitants would he fit for nothing but a madhouse, and would end in nothing hut the bankruptcy court. Armaments, however necessary, were no substitute for the political appeasement which was the only real basis of peace and which was the direct object °f tlio Government’s endeavours.