Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit THURSDAY, JUNE 13. AVOIDING WASTE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 210, 13 June 1940, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit THURSDAY, JUNE 13. AVOIDING WASTE.

The plea made the other day by the Minister of Industries and Commerce for co-operation in a national effort to eliminate waste should be heeded by all. It has regrettably been one of the characteristics of recent years that lavish consumption has been represented as a positive virtue, on the specious argument that increased consumption leads to greater demand, resulting in more employment. Care and economy, that formed one of the foundations on which the present prosperity of New Zealand was built, are now ignored where they have ndt been openly derided. The operation of economic laws would in time have brought about the cycle of correction, but forces outside those laws have hastened the time when the community must realise that avoidable waste is dead loss at any time. But in time of war, which is itself the worst and most extensive kind of destruction waste, lack of personal economy becomes an even more serious offence against the community. Individual economy is not the only virtue that should be extolled, however. The Government, which has offered good precept, should present good example. Ministers have made much of what has been done in the way of curtailment of certain works and certain expenditure, but the community feels that this has been forced upon the Government by sheer financial lmpossibility to do otherwise rather than adopted as a sound precautionary measure for the conservation of resources that will be required for the protection of our liberties. This is an all-in war, and if victory is to be achieved by the Allies all possible resources must be efficiently employed to the utmost. To imagine otherwise would be to grossly underrate the seriousness of the situation, an attitude that is as detrimental to the Allied cause as a straight-out defeatist frame of mind.