The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 1930 IS BRITAIN GOING DOWN?

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 998, 14 June 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 1930 IS BRITAIN GOING DOWN?

THIS has nothing whatever to do with the almost certain fate of the British Rugger team in the first Test match against the All Blacks at Dunedin next Saturday. It concerns the more vital interests of Great Britain as an industrial nation. The response to the question will vary in proportion to the extent of the optimism and/or the pessimism in those who take thought to answer it.

A common subject for essayists and economists in the United Kingdom is the industrial decay of this country and that, -while, on‘ occasions, under the stress of fits of depression, the gloomy topic takes the forms of questions and exclamations such as: “Have we touched bottom at last V’; “Tariffs will save us!” ; “Free Trade the only solution 1” None of the writers, although successful in providing a feast of misery for themselves, ever manages to make out a conclusive case for the downfall of Great Britain in the competitive trade clash among and between nations. The beautiful Old Land, with its rich history of achievement and splendid enterprise, still knows the grace and promise of its vernal season, its kindly if sometimes too moist summer with exasperating handicaps to cricketers, its russet glory of autumn, and its bracing rigours of a northern winter. There are games and alluring pleasures all the year round. Luxury and wealth still make London a fine city to loot. In a thousand churches praise soars to Heaven for the goodness and high destiny of the nation. As R. L. Stevenson would have said, most of the doleful critics might well be ashamed of themselves when they draw in their chairs to dinner.

A few days ago the people of Germany were told by a German journalist in London that there were “Shadows.over England.” They were urged to believe that Great Britain’s premier position in the world had gone. And so on with bits of truth to paint a dark picture, hut never the whole truth on a sombre canvas. No doubt, the man honestly believed the accuracy of his own impressions and found some pleasure in comforting his countrymen who also move under shadows and know the misery of having three million potential workers unemployed, also the loss of a great Empire, and the ironical spectacle of a former Emperor alone experiencing colossal wealth in the circumstances of an exiled patriarch rather than those of a fugitive. These foreign comments are severe enough, but all are mild in comparison with British criticism of Britain’s defects and apparent decadence. Not only in the British Press, but in Parliament itself there is reference almost daily to the decay of British industry, the demoralisation of the idle poor and the delights and delinquencies of the idle rich. “Does the country realise” (asks one London journal) “that its most important industrial centre is rotting, and that in a few years—say five years at the most— Lancashire may be one vast graveyard of derelict buildings?” Beyond any doubt at all Lancashire, like South Wales, is in a bad way. In Burnley, for example, one of the best-equipped cotton mills, with sixteen hundred looms, which could not be fitted up today for less than .€BO,OOO. fetched at compulsory auction only €4,275. Already in that industrial town no fewer than twenty-three thousand looms have been scrapped. Five thousand of a population of 97,000 have been in regular receipt of unemployment pay. Then in the House of Commons members on all sides of politics deplore the condition of slum-dwellers and discuss a plight which is had enough to he a mockery of civilisation and cause all the Bishops, statesmen, politicians and profiteers to study more earnestly the Sermon on the Mount. And yet the remedy is obvious. It is to break from muddle-headed tradition and consider the interests of British Islanders before those of foreign workers. The crazy system of Free Trade robs British workers of employment, and keeps them out of two million jobs. Thus Free Traders, obstinate as mules, are incorrigible Protectionists——for foreigners. New Zealand wallows in the same rut. Is there no sense left in responsible politicians? There is, however, a brighter side to the dismal picture. As Mrs. Philip Snowden has said with something of the same blunt courage of her Yorkshire husband, “they lie who say England is done for.” There is, in reality, no occasion for whining in the ears of the whole world. Great Britain is employing more than a million more people than it did before the war. Tt would have had no serious problem of unemployment if the Dominions had not damned the stream of immigration to their shores. So. let a courageous woman have the last word : “There is no braver nation, nor one with more sturdiness of character. . . . Then away with depression and foolish fears. We are ’up against it’ just now, but we have been ‘up against it’ before. We triumphed over difficulties in the past. We shall do so again. But do let us go into the struggle with smiles on our faces and shouts on our lips, leading the van. not slinking to the rear.” A Yorkshire lass! Is there any better? Let whimpering New Zealanders echo a wise woman’s valiant philosophy and common sense.