REPORTS EXAGGERATED

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 894, 11 February 1930, Page 8

REPORTS EXAGGERATED

AUSTRALIA SOUND AT HEART SAYS BUSINESS MAN REAL SPIRIT OVERLOOKED “Reports ’of the state of affairs in Australia are exaggerated. “Observe the little things, not merely the turmoil, and you will see that Australia is as sound as she was when, after Anzac, she became a nation in reality.” Mr. Frank Goldberg, the well-known advertising expert, made the above observations on the Xiagara yesterday in the course of an interview. He is on his way to Mount Cook to attend a meeting of the annual conference of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association. “The news which is cabled deals with strikes and lock-outs, mining troubles, floods and droughts and depression, and the average reader is apt to overlook the fact that behind all these things there is the real Australia, imbued with a spirit of optimism and with confidence in the future. “A few weeks ago at the New South Wales Anniversary regatta—which is the oldest regatta fixture in the world —the Governor-General, Lord Stonehaven, spoke of the sons of Australia in no uncertain terms. He knows Australia. Referring to the men of the surf life-saving clubs, he said that there could not be much wrong with a country in which men voluntarily submitted themselves to the rigorous discipline necessary in training for saving life in the surf. He added that in their drill and deportment the lifesavers were as steady as a regiment

>f Guards. “These are no idle words, coming tom an eminent man, and they typify he spirit that animates the young

men of Australia,** said Mr. Goldberg. The mining trouble was a very real one, he added, but there was not a man in a high position who was not confident that it would eventually be settled satisfactorily. On the coalfields there was a militant minority, headed by Communists with the ideals of Rusvia, and. the younger men were naturally swayed by these firebrands. But the New iSouth Wales Government and the new Federal Labour Government were striving honestly for a settlement. When it did come it would probably be on a basis that would establish the industry more firmly than ever.

The activities of the militants had been magnified, but behind nil the blare and the talk there was a sane body of unionists anxious to get back to work under decent conditions. “Australia has had an extraordinary wave of prosperity in the past few years with high wool prices and other factors, and an economic swing-back was inevitable,” commented Mr. Goldberg. “The Australian Tuts had a lot of money to spend, and feels the reverse effect. Like everybody else, he is fond of amusement and Tikes to live easily, and it is only natural that he is taking a little time to adapt himself to economy. But my observations, made through contact with a wide range of industrial activities, assure

mo that the same fighting spirit as of old animates the nation.

“That spirit: is so obvious throughout the Commonwealth that the people of New Zealand may rest assured that their neighbours, across the Tasman will still be a potent force in the development of Empire trade, no matter how the pessimists howl or the extremists urge that the only solution of present difficulties :is the establishment of a state like the Soviet ”