The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 1916, AFTER WAR JEREMIADS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 94, 19 April 1916, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 1916, AFTER WAR JEREMIADS.

(With which is incorporated The Tai bape Post and Waimarino News.)

A great deal has been written recently about after war conditions, reasonable and unreasonable. One intelligent farmer tells us that our products are going to drop to half their present value directly peace is declared, while another says he understands that while European Governments must be buyers our produce prices will not be much affected, and he thinks that for some time after war, owing to depletions in Europe, and possibly in some other places, of, live stock, the usual holdings of wool and manufactured woollen goods, there will remain for some considerable time a demand for live stock, meat, wool and butter that will gradually temper some fall in prices that seems inevitable. The opinions expressed by cur political leaders are so various as to be bewildering. It has been said' that producers must face a drop of, at least, fifty per cent in the price of their produce, and that there can be no more borrowing in England for a decade or more after the war; the stress will be so bad that only the rich will use butter, the masses will use margerine; cheese will drop 100 per cent (they probably mean 50 per cent) directly war is over, and pessimistically, a right down strenuous time is fixed up in the minds of these after war trade prophets that is enough to make one sell out and leave New Zealand, if he only knew of a better place to go to. They add to the dreadfulness of their picture by reminding us of the starvation in England after Waterloo, Crimea, and other great war periods. Their quotations are indisputable, but their inferences are utterly mistaken and valueless. It is inconceivable that universal franchise will not modify the extremes that obtained after Waterloo for many years, between th e rich and poor. The people of Australasia will never submit to what was forced on the masses in Britain after Waterloo, and the warning note has already been sounded by the Australian Government that those who hold riches are not to be allowed to spend, or rather invest them in a way that will take from the people the right to develop industries and institutions in the best interests of all. The people, now educated and with trained thought, will exercise an influence that some pessimists are not taking into account. It is unwise for any of us to ensconce ourselves in a fool’s paradise. The people of thi 3 Dominion will not, submit to semi-starvation while there are riches in the country. Our laws have already shown beyond any shadow of doubt that everything belongs to the State first and to the individual afterwards, and if there are any who have not realised this, they and their fellows who have not thought at all may pursue a course that will bring a rude and, to them, terrible awakening. Surely, these people who a s good as affirm that our exports are going to drop by fifty per cent, do not mean that the world outside New Zealand is going to live on half what it did before war commenced. Let these

questions be discussed in no sensational way, as whatever trouble is to come will come all the sooner, and all the more severe thereby. People in England and all other countries affected by the war arc not going to starve, if they are, it had been better there was no war. 'British people have not been fighting for the right to die of starvation but for the right to live, and to live comfortably. Does anyone think for a moment that the millions that will return from fighting, together with the millions from munitions factories are going to submit to actual want? They are going to do nothing of the kind and nobody in Britain realises this more than those who control the country’s dec tiny. England must be fed and clothed, and we shall continue to want the product of British factories, and although England may be forced to do with less than previously for a time, it is too big a stretch to say that she can do with half that she purchased from New Zealand prior to the war. No sudden calamity to our producers need be looked for because none Is apparent. Markets may be a bit jerky occasionally owing to scares set up by exploiters and others of a like ilk, but otherwise, witn reasonable and wise management ,r ,es for our produce will go stead w -''own, but never below a stage that is anything but satisfactorily profitable. What this land has to guard against is incompetent Government that will be calculated, in a delicate p> Nod, to produce uprisings, and, perhaps, revolution. But there were ever rash sensationalists predicting sudden catastrephies; if it wasn’t the end of the world, it was something more irritating. Nobody in New Zealand need waste time looking for trouble so long as public affairs are managed in the interests of the country as a whole.