Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1939. A DENIAL OF FAIR PLAY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 June 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1939. A DENIAL OF FAIR PLAY.

f PROPAGANDA that is apparently organised and is at all P events remarkably well sustained is at presen being directed against this country m London by repieseiital ... BrS commercial and industrial interests, through the col = s of influential newspapers and rn other ,^ e told that our national credit is impaired and tl < fi ncia i must expect to be penalised m the matter of the financial accommodation its Finance Minister (Mr Nash) is nov see on in London—the renewal of a loan of seventeen millions, a possibly the raising of a new loan for the pure rnse o c e material. \

For the moment, New Zealand is largely at the mercy .of the London money market and may have no' °P 0 tn take the best terms that are obtainable. Much N Pb e a,e at stake, however, than the rate o! nteresUo be paid meantime on Joans and these questions should on no account be allowed to fall into the background.

One matter that needs to be cleared up J/hat of the so-called violation of the Ottawa Agreement One of yesteiiday s cablegrams reported that Mr Nash, m addressing the Lone o Chamber of Commerce admitted that there hadbeena bieach of the letter of the Ottawa Agreement, but said 11 was d e to the necessity for meeting the Dominion s debt ons to Britain. The defence surely is adequate. The necessity ioi cutting imports at. the present stage could only averted by cutting them, perhaps by a more J P lO at an earlier stage. In no other way can New Zealand build up sufficient sterlings funds to cover the debt payments due to Britain. In the extent to which a breach has been committe , it has been made inevitable, that is to say, by Britain s creditor demands.

Mr Nash might have added that Britain herself has broken the letter of the Ottawa Agreement. She has done and is doing so specifically in the restrictions at present imposed on meat imports from this country and other Dominionsand did so in other similar restrictions of an earlier date. Ihe agieeme made at Ottawa is not immutably fixed and binding for all time. Under its own provisions it may be denounced by any of the signatories on their giving six months notice. It is a reasonable interpretation of the existing circumstances that Britain and the Dominions have thought it inadvisable to denounce the Ottawa Agreement as a whole, though the modification of some of its details has proved in working practice to be inescapable.

We are told that at the meeting of the London Chamber of Commerce addressed by the New Zealand Finance Minister :—

Mr Nash was accorded a most favourable reception, but the good impression was weakened by subsequent speakers, who> contended that it was open to New Zealand to solve hei pioblems as Australia had solved hers.

It may be agreed cordially that New Zealand has a good deal to learn from Australia, notably in the matter of building up secondary industries within her own borders. When an Australian trade mission headed by Sir Earle Page visited London last year, the right of the Commonwealth freely to develop its own'secondary industries was asserted and was admitted by Britain.

It, is strange that the “subsequent speakers’’ at the London Chamber of Commerce appear to have passed over the rather important fact that New Zealand’s recent purchases of British goods, per head of population, have been nearly three times as great’as those of Australia, nearly five times as great as those of Canada and at least considerably greater than those ol any other Dominion. ’Phis, however, is merely typical of much ol the current British propaganda against the Dominion —propaganda marked in various details by a disregard of .justice and of ordinary fair play. The city editor of the London “Times” was quoted a day or two ago as asserting that the present development of manufactures _ (in New Zealand) is excessively rapid and lavish, and a reduction in tempo, combined with the adjustment of other matters in which the Dominion s economy is out of gear, might effect a substantial economy in New Zealand’s sterling requirements without involving Mr Savage in any sacrifice of principle. e This sweeping assertion regarding an excessively rapid and lavish development of manufactures appears to have been made with an entirely reckless disregard ol the fads ol the position. It is not because she lias been developing manufactures too rapidly, but because she lias been oyer-spending on imports, and in some other directions, that New Zealand now finds it imperatively necessary Io cut down imports to some extent. The latest available figures of trade make it fairly clear that, so far as the total position is concerned, those who are now crying down the credit of the Dominion in London are “howling before they are hurt.” In the twelve months Io March 31 last, for example, our imports from Britain were valued at Lm’2s.9 —only a little over two millions Jess than in ihe preceding twelve months, which was a period of huge over-spending. Although the policy of import restriction was instituted in December, 1938, imports from Britain in ihe twelve months to March 31 last exceeded-those of the corresponding period in 1936-37 by nearly two millions, ft is true that in the last two twelve-monthly periods slightly less than hall' of our total imports have been purchased from Britain, while that country in the same periods has taken four-filths of our exports. As has been explained over and over again, however, much of this disparity is accounted for by our annual debt and other payments to Britain and by the inclusion in our exports to the United Kingdom of goods that find an ultimate destination in other countries.