THE PUTARURU PRESS. Published Every Thursday. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1923. THE ENGLISH ELECTION.

Putaruru Press, Volume I, Issue 9, 13 December 1923, Page 2

THE PUTARURU PRESS.

Published Every Thursday. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1923. THE ENGLISH ELECTION.

Office - - - Main Street ’Phone 28 - - P.O. Box 44 (Lewis," Portas and Dalli more’s Buildings*)

WHATEVER may have beer* Uie reasons which induced the Conservative leaders to go to the country, the fact remains that they made a gross political blunder. It may be that they misread the signs, and thought that the cry of ** protection ” would appeal to the hungry populace and become a national slogan. They evidently forgot that Great Britain is inherently “ free trade,” and it would require an enormous amount of propaganda to awaken the majority of the electors to the fallacies of the Free-trade fetish. Somewhere about the time when the late Hon. Joseph Chamberlain brought forward a protectionist policy a cynical but very shrewd observer told the Birmingham statesman to concentrate on practical politics for the great majority of Englishmen would prefer “to remain hungry Free-traders than well-fed Protectionists.” And the fetish worship continues to this day. Protection is killed. Of that there is no doubt. Were it to end with the rejection of a protection policy the election would not have created a very momentous position. But coinciding with the expression of disapproval of protection is the elimination of the Conservative majority. Though the strongest party numerically in the House, its numbers are insufficient to outweight the other parties. The Liberals have fallen far short of their anticipations, and the real victory is to Labour. Yet no party can hold the reins of office without the assistance of one of the other parties. Nor is there any great hope of a coalition, beyond that of expediency. The Conservatives and Labour will mix no better than oil and water. Very little more chance will there be of a fusion of the Labour and Liberal elements. The Conservatives and Liberals appear the most likely solution, but the divergent views of Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith do not indicate the possibility of peaceful and harmonious workings in the Cabinet.

HIGH FINANCE. ACCORDING to a New York message American investors Have suffered a loss amounting to perhaps <50,000 dollars through the collapse of the German mark, and investors in Great Britain and other countries have not fared much better. The New York Tribune points to Germany as not only having repudiated her own debt, but as being a gainer by about two thousand million dollars. A French commentator has put at a very much higher figure the amount of the German national fortune,’* which has escaped to other countries. This is juggling with figures as far as the uninitiated are concerned, but it brings into prominence the aspect of Germany’s attitude towards her obligations. An interesting contribution to the discussion on the subject was r. ade by Lord Aberconway at a gathering, presided over by Sir Charles F* rsons, at which the severity of the competition which Great Britain has to face from Germany in the shipbuilding and engineering industries was the subject of frank comment. “ Germany,” affirmed Lord Aberconway, “ had just perpetrated the most enormous swindle in the depreciation of the mark that the world had ever seen. For the last four years she has been selling her gold in every market in the world, and there were from four hundred to five hundred millions of gold banked in safe banks at Amsterdam, Brussels,- and New

York to the credit of the German swindlers, who had been reducing the German currency to its present condition. The same men had spent money in putting their concerns in order and in equipping them with the most modern appliances. Every form of indebtedness in Germany had disappeared and the owners of the great --hipbuilding and engineering concerns had clean slates:.” Lord Aberconway is among those, and their ' number is not small in Great Britain,

'.vho believe that force alone -will make Germany pay reparations and restore fair play in international competition. If the French view upon this point be sound the French Government should, it might be thought, find reinforcement for, rather than a weakening of, its position in the jvugrnent of an international com* mission, one of the tasks of which would be to devise a plan to make possible the collection of reparation The statement from that “the United States facing- the time when it I |}: available large sums of *

mpney to feed the German nationals because of the economic confusion in Germany,” furnishes a curious reflection- upon the whole situation. Of confusion there is abundance, and U is likely to become worse confounded unless the nations come to agreement