Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15, 1938. THE ABOLITION OF SLUMPS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 June 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15, 1938. THE ABOLITION OF SLUMPS.

4 JN the tour in ■ which yesterday he had reached the Manawatu, the Prime Minister, besides talking about a great many other things, has had something more to say about his r Government’s plans for insulating New Zealand against slumps. Many of Mr Savage’s observations on that subject are obviously well intentioned rather than informative. Along with some rather misty generalisations, he has made, however, some more or less specific statements which are not without interest At Feilding, for instance, he said in part, as he is reported: — If we can keep up the standard of production we are going to keep up the standard of living. Our money system is going to be based on production. People are going to have access to money, and any man who stands in the way will get hurt. Then again, Mr Savage is reported to have said at Palmerston North that “what human stupidity can bring about, human intelligence is capable of correcting” and further’ that “when the nations of the world accept as a national responsibility the task of directing the national economy on rational lines there will/be no wild booms and slumps. ’ ’ All this is very true, but what many people who are just as anxious as Mr Savage is to make an end of wild booms and slumps would like to know, is how New Zealand is to be insulated from the effects of slumps (brought about, let us agree, by stupidity abroad) which at intervals have the effect of reducing to a. ruinous level the price, in money or in goods, that New Zealand receives for that very large part of its total production that it exports. Mr Savage was on firm ground in declaring yesterday that the dairy industry of the Dominion is capable still of great expansion. Probably it is keeping within moderate limits to say that, if adequate markets were offering, the dairying production of the Dominion could in no very long time be doubled. Markets, however, are the problem. The ruling tendency at present is to the restriction of oversea markets and we have no command whatever over the prices obtained in those markets. If the Prime Minister and his colleagues have discovered any method of protecting the New Zealand producer from having the returns on his export produce periodically cut down, or from getting no increased return for greatly increased exports, they are keeping a. tight hold on that very desirable information. Adding to this that the Dominion, taking account of its total economy, is pre-eminently a country dependent on. export and import trade, it is plain that the more essential points of the policy of insulating the country against slumps have yetto be disclosed. NEW ZEALAND’S SECURITY. ALMOST every country in these days of lunatic disorder Zin world politics is under the necessity of giving thought to its continuing security, but probably no serious student of Pacific problems will regard the article by Lora Rothermere in the “Daily Mail,” some extracts from which were cabled yesterday, as anything else than shoddy sensationalism. “New Zealand will be one of the most vulnerable countries in the world when Japan has beaten China, the newspaper magnate declared. “In the next ten years the Dominion may find itself in a position of the greatest peril.” Many things are possible, and in the present trend of world affairs the whole fabric of modern civilisation may be considered to be in some degree endangered, but better grounds than Lord Rothermere appears to h<ne been able to show are needed to justify singling out New Zealand as a particular target of scaremongering prophecy. A glance at the cabled extracts from Lord Rothermere’s show that it is based on assumptions as unproved as they are sweeping. The inconsequence of his writing appears nowhere more obviously than in the phrase “when Japan has beaten China.” Although Suchow has shared the fate of Shanghai and Nanking, and Hankow, in turn, possibly, may be doomed, no reason appears for altering an opinion that in winning battles in China, at heavy °cost, Japan is incurring liabilities rather than recruiting additional strength, and incidentally is wasting resources of which she may have desperate need before long in her own part of the world. As virtually all parties in this country recognise, New Zealand is bound, on her own account and as a unit of the Empire, to look in these critical days to her means of defence against aggression should it come. The outlook is not yet so"bleak, however, that she must expect to become the solitary and unsupported, victim of attack by Japan. At the present day, New Zealand is linked in loyal kinship with the rest of the Empire. More than that, the hope is not yet dead that- the white races of the Pacific may be impelled to unite in upholding peace and if necessary in withstanding aggression.