The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 1927. PATRIOTISM AND PROFIT

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 70, 14 June 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 1927. PATRIOTISM AND PROFIT

SOME talk marked the administrative reception given at Wellington yesterday to the British motor trade delegation. Unless it be backed subsequently with solid business, however, much of the fine sentiment will depreciate rapidly to the level of shallow political platitude. One additional order for British goods these days is worth more to Great Britain than a volume of oratory about New Zealand’s loyalty, which is complete, fixed, entirely above suspicion. There are occasions, however, when patriotism lacks material expression. It would not be surprising to learn, for instance, that more than one representative patriot at the pleasant reception yesterday drove away in a foreign motor-ear. But these incongruities ‘occur when profit jostles patriotism, and are common to all the nations within the British Empire. Not so long ago all England grinned at the fact that, when a great conference of British manufacturers held a banquet to xiromote a demand for British goods during a patriotic shopping week, it was discovered that all the crockery had been made in Czechoslovakia !

Still, everywhere, the intention to buy British goods first is excellent. In the words of the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates, the desire of the Government, as it is also the desire of the people, is to keep trade in the family and give at least fiseal pi'eferene.e to British manufactures. And the measure of such preference is now worth £3,000,000 a year. It is quite clear, however, that the scale of preferential duty has not been high enough to restrict the flow of other oversea goods to this country. The decrease in our import trade with Great Britain has been steady throughout the past quarter of a century. In the “eighties” and “nineties” the proportion of total imports was close on 70 per cent, from Great Britain. Immediately before the world war the percentage had fallen to 60; ten years later it had dropped to 51. The figure is now a little over 52 per cent. North America has gained in trade with this country at the expense of Great Britain. The contribution of the United States to the Dominion’s imports has been doubled in a dozen years; Canada’s share has been relatively better in the past decade. These changes have been brought about largely by the phenomenal expansion of New Zealand’s motor traffic. For example, Canada’s figures for motor vehicles and parts to this country have advanced within ten vears from £107,000 to over £2,000.000.

It is not necessary to elaborate all the causes of Great Britain’s trade loss and abnormal disadvantages. The purpose of Sir Archibald Boyd-Cai'penter’s mission is to learn the reason for a part of the depreciated trade in British manufactures. It is a delight to have his emphatic assurance that British industry has not lost its traditional vigour and initiative, but is alert to changed and changing needs, and means to win the lion’s share of Empire trade.

THEIR COUNTRY’S GRATITUDE

TITIIEN, thirteen years ago, there came the call to arms, the t* young men of New Zealand took rifle and bayonet and left the land they loved to battle for the liberty they were told was in danger of extinction. Cheering crowds, aflame with war-fever and inspired by no little fear of the far-off enemy, sent them off with wonderful demonstrations of affection and enthusiasm. They promised these heroes that their sacrifices for the Empire and New Zealand would never he forgotten, and that when they returned everything would he theirs. Thousands never returned; many’ more to-day envy them their graves upon the bloody field of battle. For “man’s ingratitude to man’’ was never more shockingly manifested than in the treatment of the returned soldiers. Broken promises, neglect and contempt for suffering—is a long and a disgraceful history. Those who came back unharmed by their battles and their experiences, normal in mind and body, picked up again the threads of their sundered civil life and were permitted work where they could find it. Others were placed on the land, which they were expected to pay for eventually at rates that had been enormously enhanced by those who seized the opportunity provided by their needs—and many walked oft, broken by the impossible, burden. Others, and happier perhaps, actually crippled by war, were placed beyond want by pensions. Some of these only for the time being," because a grateful Government had them physically overhauled periodically to cut their pensions down wherever possible. And there were those who broke down after discharge, as the result of the hardships they had suffered, who had to fight, with even gi eater intensity than they had fought the common enemv, a Government which in almost every ease attempted to refuse them pensions on the excuse that their disabilities were “not due to war service.” And now, after nine years of peace, what is the position of the pensionless who went back into civil life? Many of them, even the strong and fit, begging work of the country they fought for, cannot obtain employment. In a telegram from Wellington to-dav, it is stated that the Returned Soldiers’ Hostel in that "city is to be sold, to be turned into fashionable flats, while another and cheaper, hostel is to be provided. The building is terriblv overerowded, and homeless men who cannot get beds there come in from the bitter cold and ask leave to sit bv the fire. The men who have come through the blaze of war creep in to beg a little warmth at the expense of the community which sent them forth to fight for its preservation and promised them everything! There is truth in every word of the denunciation of Mrs Bowden, secretary to the hostel.- “It is a disgrace to New Zealand to see the way some of these men have been allowed to drift.” "They are looking for work and breaking their hearts to get it,” says Mrs. Bowden. Well might their hearts break when they remember what they were promised, what they have suffered and what they have come to, and realise, to the bitter full the meaning of their country’s gratitude.