NATIONAL DEBT IN A NEW LIGHT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 144, 14 December 1911, Page 4

NATIONAL DEBT IN A NEW LIGHT.

Hie Xational Debt was presented in a somewhat new light by Mr. •F. C. Tliomson in the course of an address to the electofs of Wallace a few nights ago. He said the best way to understand the Dominion Debt was to compare it with Germany's and Great Britain's. The former's was £772,000.000 and the latter's £700,000,000. Great Britain possessed 110 realisable assets against her national debt except the Suez Canal shares and some small items, valued altogether at £40,000,000. With that exception, the money had been spent on powder and shot. The German national debt had a different origin. It had not been spent on war, but mainly on the purchase of commercial undertakings, and was a debt rather in name than in fact. Against the German national debt there were vast industrial assets, the value of which was far greater than her indebtedness. These comprised railways, nearly all the canals. extensive agricultural* domains, vast forests, and numerous mines, salt works, factories and banks. The net profits of the State enterprises of Prussia alone for the year 1907 were £41,340,001). The. people of New Zealand should think of that, because 58 per cent, of the Dominion Xational Debt was self-supportin<* and profit-making, £25.000,000 of the 58 per cent, being in railways alone. An authority (,T. Ellis Barker) stated that the book debt of the railways of the German Empire was £350,000.000, although the intrinsic value, according to a State Department, was £1,000.000,000. The combined net profits of the commercial undertakings of the German Empire and of the States composing it exceeded £60,000,000 per annum. Capitalised at 4 per cent., the State enterprises of Germany represented a value of £1,500,000. If Germany should sell her public undertakings to limited companies, she could pay off all her debts and receive a cash bonus of £800,000,000. Mew Zealand could cancel her debt to-morrow likewise if she sold her assets, but the people would be unwise to reverse their policy. The trouble about many candidates was that they read and studied little of what was going on in other countries, and looked at present-day politics from the point of view of 40 or 50 years ago. In Germany the State

was not only administrative, but was also a business enterprise, and, being exceedingly prosperous, it constantly required fresh capital, as did every prosperous and expanding private business or limited company. .Hut signs were not wanting to show that Great Britain was going to follow in the wake of Germany, and only the other day Earl Grey had declared that be was going to devote himself to hasten the time when the people would be a partner in the State.