The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1931. RUMBLES FROM SNOWDEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 37, 13 February 1931, Page 61

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1931. RUMBLES FROM SNOWDEN.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

The British Chancellor of the Exchequer possesses in abundance the primary virtue of courage. His critics may reply that in respectto national economy he has taken some time to make a challenging display of this virtue, and that if he had spoken months ago as he spoke this week in the Commons it would have been of great benefit to the country. The fact lemains that, knowing his views to be unpopular with a large section of his party, he has so spoken; he has warned the country that a serious crisis in national finance is at hand, declared that taxation has reached its limit, and appealed for sacrifices from everyone. Probably this was the most important speech on internal affairs delivered in this Government's lifetime.

Two mouths ago there was so little interest in this subject in the Commons that twice during a debate upon it the attendance fell below the quorum level. To-day, however, the Labour Party, save for a minority of extremists, votes for a Liberal amendment demanding the setting-up of a Committee to recommend economy. The Budget will jw a large deficit. Unemployment relief is making most severe drains upon the public purse, and, according to one of the most prominent members of the Liberal Party, even in the most favourably circumstances there will be well over a million unemployed in Britain for the next few years. To the Left Wing of the Labour Party, Mr. Snowden's attitude is rank treason. These members see nothing wrong in taxing wealth out of existence; that, indeed, is what wealth exists for. They still proceed on the assumption that there is a more or less inexhaustible reservoir of wealth, which can be drawn on indefinitely to benefit the masses. Mr. Snowden knows better, and because he knows better, and has the courage to say so, he is accused by a member of his own party of having become "the handmaid of Capitalism." He realises that prosperity can be taxed away, that capital must be allowed to accumulate so that it can be invested at home and abroad, and that high taxation involves the risk of British manufacturers being undercut by foreign competitors. In short, he faces the facts, seeing Britain as she really is, an economic entity of vast complexity, trading with all countries, the financial centre of the world, still enormously wealthy and powerful, but just as subject as the humblest company to the inevitable law that Mr. Micawber * enunciated so clearly in his immortal illustration of the dependence of happiness upon a surplus of revenue over expenditure. His warning and appeal are the first step taken to put the brake on Britain's expenditure and to bring the country to a realisation of fundamental truths. His words are also important as illustrating the fundamental and' widening cleavage between moderate Labour and the Marxian wing.