NOT DOWN AND OUT

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Volume 59, Issue 50, 31 March 1930, Page 5

NOT DOWN AND OUT

POSITION IN ENGLAND. / A GREAT NATTON'S BTJRDEN. "Don't you let a visitor come to New Zealand and tell you that the bottom is out of old Great Britain," said Mr Ashcroft Edwards at the motor meeting in Hastings on Saturday night. "A man goes to the Old Land, takes a cursory look round and then comes back and tells you that England is down and out," he continued. "But," he said, "let'me tell you that Old England is not down and out. True she is struggling, but sinee 1924 all trades, with two exceptions, are improving every day. The exceptions are shipbuilding and coal and we hope their turn is coming. When we considered that £100,000 has to he raised daily for the next 60 years in payment of the war debt to America and that the British workman ha§ to bear this burden, whicli makes him the higest taxpayer in the world, one realised what a wonderfpl man the Britisher was. I say that no nation in the world could have carried this burden successfully and honourably unless that was a great nation, and Britain was a great nation. Why, you talk about the unemployment of England and you hear that she is down and out. True, Britain, with its 45,000,000 people has 1,500,000 unemployed, but do you realise that Germany with a population half as great again as Britain has three fnillion unemployedi whilst in the ITnited States, ■ with its 120,000,000 people there are six million unemployed — a greater num'ber in proportion to that of Great Britain. Yct no one savs the bottom is out of America^ The American does not knock his own eountry." *