The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. WEDNESDAY, SEPT 22, 1920. WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE?

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3585, 22 September 1920, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

WEDNESDAY, SEPT 22, 1920. WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE?

With which in incorporated “The Taihape Post and Waimarino News,”

There appeal's to be a lurking determination throughout the great countries of the world to bring about many drastic economic changes while the affairs of those countries are yet in the melting-pot. On one side trading relationships are improving; markets disclose :a tendency to become easier; a diseased exchange rate is showing distinct evidence of rapid recovery; stocks are held in increasingly higher esteem; industries are commencing to flourish in such war-ridden countries as have any widespread desire for poaoe; In fact the omy shadow across the brightening silverlining is that shipping will continue to prevent rapid reconstruction so long as it is controlled entirely in the interests <o£ the members of the shipping ring instead o.f in the interests of trade and industry in eV countries. On the othe’- side is ar. organisation that will no". anything approaching the old e-.vrmnnc order re-established. In ItUßida every man’s hand is raised against his brother; in Italy the workers in various industries .arc wresting control of factories, mines and farms from capitalist owners, without payment therefor; in the Uited States there is a campaign of terrorism being waged that is convulsing peaceful minded people with horror; in Britain there is an under-current deep and immeasurable. determined to bring about new systems and relationships, industrially and socially, in national life. In India British rule is most gravely menaced", British insti utions and British people are being boycotted, even to law courts, and a national conflagration is momentarily probable. Serious as conditions are in the outposts of the Empire, they are, and must remain, subsidiary to what is current at the heart of the Empire, for chaos there would be dangerously reflected in every other part. The point of convergence of aspects of all turmoil indicates that the struggle is one. primarily for reforming methods by which wealth is distributed. Extremists, amongst whom are included Bolsheviks, Anarchists and all who advocate sabotage and any other crime presenting as a means to an end, as well as a very large mass of the people who have cast in their lot with extremists because they see no other road to the reforms they desire, are distributing the leaven of distrust, corrupting the best judgment of the Empire’s grandest working battalions. The me‘hods in vogue by extremists in England have their counterpart in Canada, South Africa, Australia and in New The most serious economic trouble is centred around coal and at this moment it is uncor ain whether Britain j is not to bo convulsed with a struggle which may develop into anything, even into something worse than Bolshevism, if that were possible. Viewing the persistency with which the British coal fight is carried on there is some cause for an increasing pessimism amongst captains of British industry and finance. The would-be wreckers apparently care nothing about the Empire’s future, for they have designedly made coal the centre of the awful vortex they are developing, knowing that every wheel of industry depends upon coal and that there can bo no real home without, coal. That stage in the problem has been reached when it is referred to in cablegrams as “The British Coal Crisis.” Conferences are frequent, some of them bitter between Governmen and the miners; and it Is exas-

perating to note that these conferences arc often little more than a playing for popularity. Misrepresentations are not infrequently the cause of an extension and deeper bitterness of the struggle. It should be evident that gratuitous threats to close down factories all over the country in the present temper of the populace Is much more fraught with serious consequences than if a more humane and less combatant attitude were observed. It is a fact that in Britain, as well as in New Zealand, there are men owning factories and mines who are senselessly urging for an immediate appeal to force. Those men are neither earnest nor honest in their ravings, but they do constitute a real danger, and no one will bo more snr- . prised and alarmed than they will be . If the shades of the j god of war are successfully invoked. Official British reports disclose that the Government ■ is striving for an increased output, of ■ coal, and the miners’ reply is, “Why should we begin to increase the output for the purpose of increasing wages when the Government is already getting the money to pay the increase.” And they say that if the increase is not conceded other proposals hoed not be considered for a strike would he recommended. In New Zeaalnd a similar conditions obtains; there is a shortage of coal for all purposes; miners are manouevring, making attacks here and there, feints or real; they are reconnoitring with a view to discovering a process that will not set popular feeling against them, and all the time coal-owners do nothing but obdurately sit tight. The struggle in New Zealand as well as that in Britain has been long and persistent; it is having an effect upon the nerves of the people generally as well as upon the nerve and temper of those engaged, or concerned, in the coal industry. It cannot go on for ever, it must either get worse or better, anff what the ultimate is to be is what most people are now wondering. The great question now is “what is the end of it all to be and when is that end coming.” No comprehensive attack in force has yet been made by one army against the entrenchments of the other, and it appears that the Government, whose prior duty it is to maintain peace, will be lit'le more than a spectator of what is to happen when the clash comes. There is one feature of the raging discontent within the Empire Britons in the South Pacific cannot but view w r i‘h utmost seriousness and that is the possible revolt in India, for with India an enemy to Britain It becomes difficult to realise., how effective protection of British interests in these southern seas is to be maintained. Unfortunately for the race the I.W.W. cult has spread until thousands of men in New Zealand are being used up in its machinery without having any suspicion of the fact; hut the classes are so divided; their various interests so opposed to each other, and that no Government in sight is strong enough to successfully inter-' vene in the interests of peace, that nothing is more apparent than a fight to a finish. The British.coal problem may ultimately he solved by nationalisation; Italian salvation may he reached by an extended production, workers having taken possession of factories; the sensational losses of life and millions worth of property will be. repealed in the United States because American? have invited the worst elements in the world’s population to share their ,heds, despite the millions they spend in a “Red”’ hunt and in deportations. Everywhere the fight has got past that stage when negotiated peace looked possible, and ,it seems that an economic struggle appalling in its promising magnitude is left, there is nothing else to hope for.