APPORTIONING THE BLAME

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 64, 17 March 1927, Page 8

APPORTIONING THE BLAME

(To the Editor.)

Sir.—Your Jucid comment on the setback our butter lately .receive* in tn« English market is very interesting and instructive, but.many of your readert wUI perhaps consider that you have dealt more than generously with the Government for its share of blame in that unfortunate happening. When the legislation adopted was being discussed in Parliament, it must bo remembered that numerous people in the country considered the proposals dangerously rash, aa not likely to be received in a friendly spirit by old and Valued customers, and that the Board might create so much antagonism that our. butter would not be wanted, and that, at you have in effect stated, is precisely what has happened. - The chairman of the Board has said that the smack we have received was "stage managed.'" Of course it ira* stage managed," but was not our action provocative? The individual who knows that he holds an invincibly strong hand is not. likely to accept, anybody's bluff, it it'all very well for the Prime Minister to suggest that the whole responsibility for our reversfe rests on the Board. But it does not appear he nor any other Minister can show that when the utatute was in the making, Government realised that what woa proposed to be done might widely miss the mark aimed at; break up business connections, and so result in the virtual turning away of cash instead of collecting it; that it -warned members of this danger, and told them all it knew, or all that it ought to have known, of the reasons why the peril mentioned ought to be taken into account by members as something that might eventuate.' By failing to give Parliament the "lead" that, seemingly, it ought' to have given. Government gambled with a ;very important asset of the country, and the public will, no doubt, recognise how reproof for the loss made should be apportioned. —I am, etc., V . , CIVIS.