POINTS OF VIEW FROM THE WORLD'S PRESS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 292, 4 August 1932, Page 2

POINTS OF VIEW FROM THE WORLD'S PRESS

COMMENTS ON CURRENT TOPICS

LIBERIA'S GHASTLY RECORD. London Daily ' Tetegraph: These 16,000 Americaii-Liberian negroes, who rule — as a civilised Christian community — over ah indigenous population of 2,500,000, have a shocking record of maladministration. They are in perpet'ual frietion with the natives of the intsrior, whose confidence they have never won and who refuse to pay their exaetions. Then follow punitive expeditions in which villages are burnt, and too often the native's are humt with them. We now hear of 44 villages burnt and 159 villagers slaughtered — measures strictly necessary, according to the Liberian representative on the eommittee, for the mainteriance of law and order. # * * THE TRUTH ABOUT INDIA. London Daily Express: A short time ago Mr. Durlabh was a National Congress leader in the Bardoli district of India. He was fervid for the causes of Swaraj. Now Mr. Durlabh says: "Daran the politicians! Damn Swaraj! What we want is for Congress to leave us alone, and for the Government to reduce the heavy taxation which is grinding us down." Mr. Durlabh has stumbled on to the trutli about ■ India. Her real troubles are neither political nor religious. They are economic. He has realised that India is still a poor country, and that what is needed is the greater exploitation of potential wealth and not the different distribution of present poverty. * * =!= THE REV OLUTION IN CHILE. Nisw York Herald-Tribune : Unlike the usual political overturn in those countries, it cannot be dismissed as just as one more Latin-American revolution. Its special significance lies in the fact that it represents the first serious attempt to introduce on the American Continent an economic and special system that has been condemned by its most responsible leaders of thought and action. Even Mexico, in her most extreme moments, stopped far short of the lengths to which the Chilean radicals would go. The movement in Chile carries within it a double challenge — to the established order in all other American countries and to the interests of foreign investors in that republic. * * * THE AMERICAN CRISIS. J. L. Garvin in the Observer (London) ; The contrast in America today between the aecumulation of gold and the blighting of life and happiness is amongst the most unexpected and astonishing things in human experienee. ,We ventured to say a few months ago that America was cutting her own throat with a golden razor. In the economic sense this is not a metaphor but a fact. Payment of war debts by Europe, over and above the habitual balance of trade in favour of the United States, led to che prodigious aecumulation of gold. The consequences were of two kinds and affected very dilferently the reeeivers and the payers. On the one hand American enterprise was lured into unprecedented orgies of optimistic imagination. Over-confidence, overconstruction, over-trading of every kind; mortgaging of future purchasing power by the instalment system; jubilance in speculation — all these were carried to a height bound to end in an economic crash. " Had Mephistopheles wished to manipulate America he need not have planned and worked it otherwise. * * * WHAT ARE WAR DEBTS? My Magazine: What were the war debts? They merely consisted of the supplies in aid which were pass'ed from' the rich Allies to the poor Allies. That is to say, the two rich Allies sent war goods to their poorer friends in order to enable them to fight. Sup>pose the rich Allies had not sent these war supplies to their poor friends. In that case France and Italy would have been overrun by the enemy, and the rich Allies would have been overwhelmed in the misfortunes of their poor friends. The Germans would have quickly conquered France, and London would have been presented with the staggering pi'oblem of a German coast across the English Channel, from which emerging submarines would have made it very difficult to feed London. How inequitable and ridiculous it was, therefore, for the rich Allies to write down in their books the value of the war goods they sent to the poor Allies, and after the war to demand repayment with interest! The suplies were simply a form of mutual aid in the common cause.

FREE STATE AND DOMINIONS. Oliservef : Mr de Valera's * eburse implies that an agreement solemnly accepted hy one Government can be repudiated by its successors. It follows, therefore, that an undertaking given hy himself at Ottawa or elsewhere would be just as fragile as that which he has so lightly discarded. Ha would ask Dominions which cherish their word as sacred to accept in exchange tenders that on his own showing may lose their value at any moment. ■ Mr. Thomas describes such an outlook adequately for practical purP'oses when he says that it "would make ordinary business relationship impossible." If the attitude of the Free State remains unchanged; nothing can follotv but a refusal to do business with it at Ottawa, withdrawal of the Preference we now conceda to it, and a differential tax on its imports to Great Britain for the recovery of the defaulted annuities. AFTER AMERICAN ELECTION . Economist: To-day, America, with her eyes blinded by the dust of the electoral arena, is in no mood to think over-much of world problems. By the autumn, th'e atmosphere in the United States will he different. If a final settlement he achieved at Lausanne, it will be impossible for the American "man in the street" to avoid saying to himself: "In order to remove what they coneeived to be a fatal obstacle to the recovery of international trade, these Europeans have cancelled their claims in respect of inter-Governmental war debts among themselves, although they knew that they ran the risk of still having to pay their debts to America at the cost of a great burden to their own Budgets. Should we not perhaps be wise to follow the same policy in our own interests?" * * :i: NATIONAL and LOCAL SPENDING Daily Telegraph: Spending, it is true, depends quite as much on policy as on economy of administration, and the idea that the nation must not economise on its social services is preposterous. It may also be remembered that the May Committee concentrated on a rather narrow front, and that £88,000,000 out of the £96,000,000 of savings which they recommended were derived from three sources alone— unemployment insuranc i, education, and roads. Local expenditure has not only increased pari passu with national, but it has been encouraged by Exchequer grants, offered in too many cases as bribes and inducements to persuade local authorities to plunge. The whole system of grants in every department needs scaling down, and the same is no less true of personal and private expenditure. Every c-lass has been living above its real iucu.r.e, with no addition to its efficieney, and certainly with none to its contentment. * * * * PROHIBITION QUESTION. Yancouver Province: Mr. John D. Rockefeller, jun., has changed sides on the prohibition question, and the editors of the United States agree that the event is news of first-class importance. Slowly and reluctantly, as Mr. Rockefeller tells Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, he has come to believe that natnonal prohibition of alcoholic liquors will not do. Mr. Rockefeller is very convincing when he speaks of the reluctance with which he reaehes this conclusion. He comes of a long line of old-fashioned abstainers. His mother and his grandmother, he recalls, were women wh6 prayed oli their knees in saloons, to save men from the evils of drink. Now, he confesses, there are probably three American speakeasies where there was only one bar-room before. "that a vast army of lawhreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale; that many of our best citizens, piqued at what they regard as an infringement of their private rights, have op'enly and unabashed disregarded the Eighteenth Amendment; that as an inevitable result, respect for all law has been greatly lessened; that crime has increased to an unprecedented degree." He has been " an ardent prohibitionist, has supported the cause with his money, his time and his name, has believed that the Eighteenth Amendment was there to be respected and enforced. But he has come to believe that it can not he enforced, that respect for all law in the United States has been greatly lessened in the tragic farce of sham enforcement, that the law ought to be repealed.