The Times. PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS. "We nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice." TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1918. CONDITIONS AFTER THE WAR.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 7, Issue 420, 22 October 1918, Page 2

The Times. PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS. "We nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice." TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1918. CONDITIONS AFTER THE WAR.

Thb cabled summary of the report that Mr R. W. Dalton, British Trade Commissioner for New Zealand, has made to the British Board of Trade, is calculated to reassure a good many people who have felt pessimistic as to the condition of things in the Dominion after the war. Mr Dalton after spending about eighteen months here in investigating matters bearing iipon our trade and production left for Home about three months ago, and the slight glimpse we have been permitted to take at the conclusions he arrived at are sufficient to cause us to await the full text of the report with interest.

Mr Dalton, who gave to those who met him the impression that he was a keen and capable observer, fully competent to form a judgmatical opinion, says that he fully anticipates a continuance of the prosperity which New Zealand has experienced throughout the war period. He expects prices to continue high after the war, with heavy buying oi our produce, and an important campaign of development. During the years immediately following the war Mr Dalton expects New Zealand to show very rapid progress and considers British traders, investors and companies, would be extremely unwise not to give the New Zealand market most careful attention and investigation.

An opinion like this, deliberately delivered by a man of mature judgment who has had exceptionable opportunities for learning the truth and has not been in any way biassed by interests in the Dominion, is worth a hundred of those of our own publicists or politicians, in whom the wish may be quite possibly father to the thought. We have had many prophecies from time to time, ranging from the direct pessimism, which pictured New Zealand unable to pay the interest on the war loan, to the most buoyant optimism, but there have been

none, so far as we are aware, founded upon so careful a survey of the conditions as this of Mr Dalton's.

But we are not going to have all this good fortune unless we continue to endeavour to deserve it. The adage that Heaven helps those that help themselves applies as equally to communities as to individuals. Unless our leaders as well as our rank and file set steadily to work to deserve prosperity, prosperity will not come our way. Our National Government has not so far done much to deserve either the confidence or the esteem of the people. But, as its faults have been rather the sins of omission than those of commission there is yet time to do much to repair them if the task is faced with resolute vigour.

We are firm believers in the value of constructive as opposed to destructive criticism, but we only have room at present to point out two of the directions in which the Government might move with great advantage to the general community, and, incidentally, to the whole Empire. The first of these is the curbing of the profiteers, who have the country literally by the throat. The Government has done its duty against the foe without. Can it not also do its duty against the almost equally dangerous enemy within ? The workingman can scarcely be expected to be contented and to give his best in the way of work when he sees every rise in his wages more than counterbalanced by the rise in the articles he has to purchase and knows that a few importers and manufacturers are making huge fortunes out of his necessities, while he becomes daily poorer. The second way in which the Government can help is by doing all it can to stimulate production. By improving the methods of land-transit, by regulating New Zealand and inter-colonial shipping facilities, by preventing the shutting out of necessaries by the shipping-space being monopolised by superfluities, and above all by seeing that the farmer has an adequate supply of fertilizers at a price at which he can profitably apply them to his land, the National Government may yet rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the people. Can it not be persuaded, even at the eleventh hour, to give up its policy of " masterly inaction ?"