CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 333, 21 June 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

POSITION OF THE DOMINION. The chairman of the Bank of New Zealand, following his usual custom, had something to say at the annual meeting last week about trade and commerce and the position of the Dominion generally. Some of the matters he touched upon are worthy of consideration. Perhaps the most important, from a national point of view, was the observation that we are a greater buying race than a selling one, that' our imports increased out of proportion to our exports, and that during the past four years the exports have failed to meet the cost of our imports and interest. Mr. Beauchamp quoted figures showing that during the four years to March, 1911, our imports were valued at £65,939,007, and our exports at £77,596,252. The amount due on interest was approximately £14,000,000, so that according to Mr. Beauchamp, we were £2,342,815 short of requirements. But the position is not so bad as he puts it. It has been pointed out that if he had taken a five years' period, the following position would be arrived at:—Exports, £97,030,892; imports, £80,656,365. The amount due on interest was approximately £17,000,000, and New Zealand had to find a sum of £97,656,365. Our exports for the period were £97,030,891. Therefore there was a shortage of £625,473. This sum would be more than made up by the capital brought out by settlers. There is also the consideration that a very large amount of the money borrowed in London during the five years' period came out in the form of goods. It is clear, therefore, that we are on the right side of the ledger. Still it is evident that we are not producing to an extent that would make us quite safe and independent when the markets for our stuff articles were low, and give us a chance in the near future of doing away with the necessity for borrowing. Mr, Beanchamp's remedy is the old honry and necessary remedy—land settlement. While land is hard to get, whilst hundreds and hundreds of men are wanting land and cannot succeed in obtaining it from the Government and the price from the private holders is out of proportion to what may be made off it, our exports will not swell. The time has arrived when there must be a more progressive land policy, when the tacts of unused Maori lands should be brought into cultivation, and when intensive farming methods should be the general rule, and not the exception. With a vigorous land policy should come greater population. Then the country would expand as it never has expanded before, and there would he no ground for apprehension that our im portatiorts and interest ohligations were greater tha* our exports.

"OETTTXG i;P IX YEAKS." T..c Australian aboriginal in liis native state lias a peculiar method of dealing with his aged parent. When the "old man" is 100 feeble to chase kangaroos his dutiful children hit him on the head with a club, very sorrowfully, of course, but still decisively. The Fijian used to eat lik worthless parent if he were not too tough. In Xew Zealand it is different. Old people are tolerated to u greater extent, and many wealthy children are careful to see that the poor old man gets the old-age pension, and at least a nuipo whare to live, in. X'ot long ago we published an extract showing that a particularly large percentage of great men had done their distinctive work and won great fame at a very advanced age. In Xew Zealand men do not know they are old until the "boss," either a, man or a corporation, hands them their discharge. There have been case in X.Z. where private persons and corporations have discovered that after ,'X) or 40 years' services, a servant is no longer worth his place. This is more or less the age of young men —the virile, vigorous age when the youth is considered more capable than ever before of instructing his grandmother in the art of egg-sucking—and the old men go to the wall. We make no protest because it is useless. In most modern places, just as in most savage places, there is no room for the old man. We have seen innumerable court and ''benevolent" board family wrangles about the keep of a septuagenarian. Indeed, the number of people who have to be legally dealt with in order to force them to maintain aged parents is a disgrace to civilisation. But the most pathetic phase is that of the old man who has toiled at his job for half a century and then finds that he is "not wanted," and we don't protest—because it is useless.

THE PROMOTION OF PEACE. ■ A gathering of distinguished men discussed the relations between Britain and licrmany at a meeting of the International Arbitration League in London lasi month. Lord Lorelmrn, the Lord Chancellor, presided, and in an opening speech said that he believed that friendly relations with (iermany could be established if the sensational section of'the Press could he induced, to exercise some forbearance. "[ am well aware," he added, "that the Germans are a proud race, and they are entitled to be a proud race. I am afraid thai we also are a proud race, and I hope we may say also we are entitled to entertain tliat feeling. That is a very good foundation for a solid and protracted friendship." The Lord Chancellor reminded those people who thought the peace ideal visionary that great progress had been made already. Fou-tcen years previously Britain bad ben on the verge of a serious quarrel with the United States, and now war between the two nations was unthinkable. The hostility between Britain and France, ami between Britain and Russia, had'been forgotten, and it was absurd to say that Germany alone must continue to 'he regarded as an enemy. Professor ?,iepcr, of Munich University, said that in Ins opinion much of the ill-feeling tha: made Britons and Germans suspicious of one another had been engineered by a certain section of the newspapers, '-whose ignorance, love of sensation and scandal greatly exceeded t.ieir zeal for -irutli." The jealousy which arose from eemmercial competition, be said, could never find any satisfaction in war, for no war waned for reasons of commerce had ever attained so much as a dividend of one, penny in the pound on the costs' incurred. The meeting was of opinion that the time was ripe for an energetic attempt to remove all the mutual distrusts from the minds of the British and German people.