WAR CABINET

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 16, 18 July 1940, Page 12

WAR CABINET

MR. POLSON'S CONCERN

TWO AUTHORITIES

PERIL TO UNITY?

"It looks as if we are going to have two authorities dealing with the one subject from very different angles," declared Mr. W. J. Poison (National, Stratford), in the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon when expressing some concern at the situation that existed through the setting up of the War Cabinet.

He pointed out that the position today was that they had two Cabinets. His difficulty was to see how it was possible to dissociate some of the problems that must necessarily come before the War Cabinet from those that come before the ordinary Cabinet.

"The Prime Minister, in reply to a question of mine last night, said it was quite understood that the Government was to carry out the Budget it had brought down," continued Mr, Poison. "If the Government is to carry out that Budget, which is a war Budget, then what purpose is served in setting up a War Cabinet?"

Compared with the war effort, he said, internal policy was a minor matter, but it did affect the lives of the people of the Dominion, and when the war was won that question would again attain pre-eminence in the affairs of the country. The two sections of the House had obligations to their supporters to see that the policies for which they stood were not destroyed by the arrangement now made. INDEPENDENCE OF ACTION. "I am going to do all I can to help in the war effort, but I must have independence of action in regard to my own judgment as to what happens internally, and I am not going to give my pledge to support any Cabinet, whatever its type, which pursues a plan of action inside the Dominion which I do not stand for. "I do not see how it is possible, if one does not believe in everything that the Budget proposes—there are some things that Government members themselves do not believe in. If we are compelled, because of the fact that a War Cabinet has been, set up, to agree to this, or if the War Cabinet is not to have any say in it, we have reached immediately an ominous situation, which will not make for that unity which the country demands of us."

As a war Budget the Budget continued to support those things which the Opposition said it was. not possible to continue to support in times like *hese, said Mr. Poison. It was a record peacetime Budget superimposed on a war Budget. He wanted to see the. House concentrate on the prosecution of the war. They could only be united on the things on which they agreed in the House, and in order to present a united front they should decide the things on which they were united and go ahead with those, as was being "done in Great Britain.

"We have to get back to hard work and self-reliance, and appreciation of the sacrifices that have to be made," he added.