Commonwealth and Foreign
NEW FOUND LAND REVISITED
By THOMAS LODGE
[Mr. Lodge was a member of the Commission of Government for Newfoundland from 1934 to 1937] T WENT to Newfoundland in 1934 with the conventional 1 belief in democracy to which we would nearly all have subscribed in those days when we had no thought that democracy was threatened. I left Newfoundland at the end of 1936 convinced that democracy, with all its short- comings, is infinitely preferable to a completely non-demo- cratic form of government and—in the long run—certain to be less inefficient. If I were a young Newfoundlander today I would work openly for a return of some measure— and an increasing measure—of local responsibility, even if such a change in the form of government could only be secured at the price of a reduction in the material aid which Great Britain is at present giving to her oldest colony. I would do so because to me it is obvious that that material aid is accomplishing the political corruption of the people without achieving economic rehabilitation. A quarter of the island is overtly being saved from starvation by an exiguous dole. Another quarter of the island—including a large percentage of the merchant class—is being kept in greater or less com- fort by a disguised dole.
I have just returned from a fortnight's stay in the island. In its present form, Commission Government has not even the appearance of efficiency. It must strike the visiting Canadian or American as hopelessly amateurish. April is the month of the year in which the year's fishery is being planned. The Chairman of the Commission was in England, presumably settling with the Dominions Office whether double collars or wing collars are to be worn when His Majesty makes his fleeting visit to the island in June. One English Commissioner and one Newfoundland Commissioner were in England presumably undertaking the education of a new Secretary of State. It was common knowledge in St. John's that the term of office of the Commissioner in charge of the most important Department was ending in the early summer, and that he could not be expected to take far-reaching decisions on matters of policy, the fulfilment of which would lie with his successor.
It would be unfair to criticise the particular Commissioner for something for which he is not responsible. The respon- sibility lies on the Secretary of State, who deliberately chose the middle of the summer as the time at which the first Commissioner of Natural Resources should cease to act, and who has consistently failed to give to the Commission as a whole that directing mind without which no such body could hope to evolve a consistent or a successful policy.
When the Governor is absent from the island his place as Chairman of the Commission is taken by the Chief Justice.
It was a system suitable enough in the days of responsible Government, when there was a constitutional Governor bound to act on the advice of his Ministers. It is quite un- suitable in a constitution in which the Chairman of the Com- mission shares fully, or ought to share fully, the responsi- bility for every Government act.
Is it astonishing that local opinion is becoming a little restive? In 1938 the Commission of Government embarked on the slippery slope of a direct subsidy to what is con- sidered to be the main industry of the island, the catching and curing of cod-fish. In order that the merchants might be able to pay the fishermen three dollars a quintal for the manufactured article the Commission gave the merchants an apparently open guarantee against loss. In April the Government and the trade were discussing exactly how this guarantee was to be implemented. The Government in- dicated that for 1939 a similar and more extensive guarantee would be given, but they displayed considerable reluctance to formulate their plans in terms precise enough to satisfy those hard-headed realists the bankers, who would have had to consent to advances and who very naturally wanted to know the exact security which their clients could offer.
I do not myself believe that the cod-fishery, as it is at present carried on—even with the addition of the subsidiary fisheries—is, or ever will be, an adequate basis for the eco- nomic life of the island. I doubt indeed whether over the last century it ever was an adequate basis. If one excludes the extraordinary years of the war itself and those which imme- diately succeeded it, during which the Latin world was ready to pay for dried cod the price which we now pay for the best Dover sole, then in Newfoundland thirty thousand fishermen—more or less—have been spending their energy producing commodities the annual gross value of which at the point of leaving the island has been about kr,soo.000—more or less. Out of this gross value the merchant and the legal and the clerical and the administrative classes have obviously managed to make a tolerably comfortable living. The fishermen have had what was left and the result is there for anybody to see.
I find dried cod-fish the easiest thing in the world to do without. The hospitable Newfoundlander—and for whole- hearted hospitality Newfoundland has no rival—never offer: it to his guests, but he does think that the world as a whole ought to take the whole of the island's production at a price which will keep the island in comfort. When the world declines to do this he is bewildered and blames everybody but himself. But if anybody suggests that it would perhaps be as well to begin to think about a radical reconstruction of the economy of the island, he is indignant at the whimsi- cality displayed. Why on earth did the Almighty put the cod in the sea if it was not intended that the Newfoundlander should live on it?
It is, of course, quite possible that I am quite wrong.
Perhaps if one has faith enough, thirty thousand fishermen and the comfortable classes can extract a tolerable living out of £1,500,000 worth of fish. Perhaps the Italians and the Spaniards—not to speak of the Greeks and the Portu- guese—can be persuaded to pay high prices for a product which few Englishmen would eat at any price. But if the British taxpayer is to go on meeting an unlimited deficit— which includes the ultimate amortisation of the whole debt of the island—he is surely entitled to ask that there shall be functioning a governing body which has a plausible policy which the Secretary of State can make intelligible to the House of Commons. Up to the present all that the tax- payer has had has been liberal doses of vague optimism.
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