CONDITIONS IN EUROPE

Otago Witness, Issue 4028, 26 May 1931, Page 28

CONDITIONS IN EUROPE

AN ECONOMIC CRISIS FEELING OF SECURITY ESSENTIAL. RUGBY, Alay 19. In the afternoon Air Henderson opened the session of the Committee of the League of Nations Council on European Union. He said that Europe was passing through an economic crisis of the greatest severity. Unemployment, poverty and starvation existed, while the corn bins of Europe and countries overseas were bursting with food, which could not be sold, and capital by countless millions was. lying idle in the banks. An atmosphere of international security and freedom from fear of war, he insisted, was the first essential for economic prosperity, and he agreed with President Hoover that if the Disarmament Conference next year succeeded it would do much to end the world crisis. He said that in many countries public opinion was beginning to understand the useless suffering which economic nationalism had caused, and was turning in favour of a programme of concerted international action through the machinery of the League of Nations. The greater part of Europe was urgently calling for credit, but the countries which had a surplus of resources seemed more and more reluctant to lend. The nations were striving by every means to keep out foreign goods and impoverishing both themselves and others. The principal creditor countries insisted on the payment of debts, but refused to accept the goods which the debtor countries had to offer, and insisted on payment in gold, consequently the scramble for gold had largely contributed to the recent catastrophic fall in prices. Mr Henderson appealed to the Russian delegate (Al. Litvinoff) to banish the thought that the members of the League were plotting war against the Soviet, and assured him that they were hoping for increasing peaceful intercourse based upon mutual observance of international obligations.