CORRESPONDENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 65, 16 March 1940, Page 12

CORRESPONDENCE

FUNDS FOR WAR PURPOSES

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —I would not deliberately seek to add to the embarrassments of our Goverment in their efforts to fulfil their promises to the Motherland in connection with the war commitments the Government has made, and with which probably ninety-five per cent, of the population agree, nevertheless, at a time like this jvhen'donations to a fund of £100,000 are being canvassed, to say nothing of special taxation, and the cost to thqusahds of individuals in sending parcels of comforts to their own relatives in the fighting forces, which must mean self-denial to a very severe extent for most of them. I feel sure that if the Government set a good example in the matter of self-denial of their ambitions at a time like this, when, as they frankly admit, we are engaged in an "all in" fight for national existence, the alternative being national extinction (Mr. Goebbells says "We must destroy the British"), it would have a wonderful effect on the people of New Zealand.

Such a gesture would encourage people to give more freely to the object already mentioned, and encourage the giving of interest-free loans for the duration of the war. For instance, the Government might advisedly drop its much-too-sumptuous broadcasting building scheme and all other building projects which can quite well be done without until the war is over. These projects are highly unpopular with those who will have, to pay for them but who will get no golden keys or trowels when their money is spent, and if the Government dropped all these schemes and applied the moneys allocated for them to the- war expenses account I feel sure they would get a surprise in the response they* would obtain to such a gesture.

There are hundreds of firms who, through the application of a wrong system of import control, have their trading capital accumulating in their banks instead of being used in their businesses who would willingly lend some of this 1 money to the Government for the duration of the war, free of interest, if they received concrete assurance that huge sums of money were not going to be spent on broadcasting palaces and other similar projects that ordinary prudent business people would eliminate from their finance schedules in times like these without a moment's hesitation.,

There must be thousands of people in New Zealand whose ideas coincide with those expressed in this letter and who desire to do everything they can to assist our war efforts but who will not give their money to a Government which is spending huge sums on quite unnecessary projects. These things can come later, but surely i\ is just common sense to: stake everything on this fight for life or death.—l am, etc.

CITIZEN.