UNDER COVER OF WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 107, 1 November 1940, Page 4

UNDER COVER OF WAR

ATTACK ON CAPITAL

VIEW OF GOVERNMENT

POLICY

(Special to the "Evening Post.")

LEVIN, This Day,

The statements attributed to the Hon. P. C. Webb.on .the West Coast in which Mr. Webb spoke of the capitalist becoming "as dead as Julius Caesar" were referred to by Mr. W. J. Poison, M.P., in an address at Levin on Wednesday

evening. It was very confusing to the "public mind, said Mr. Poison. Mr. Webb sup-, ported a Government that stood for the socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. If that were carried out capitalists would be as dead as the dodo. They knew that that was the Government's policy but the war should not be a stalking horse for it. The Government was asking capitalists to lend money to prosecute the war. Those capitalists were to be strangled, and the Government allowed one of its leading Ministers to make the statement at the very time an appeal for funds was made. Mr. Poison declared that here was where they divided. The National Party believed that private ownership —farm, home, shop—was the best system a nation could have. War finance meant sacrifice. The object was to win the war, not to fight Capital. Tax capital as far as it can bear, but take capital away—the principal—and you take away what pays the tax, said Mr. Poison. Those who talked of a capital levy were pandering to those who did not understand its dangers and difficulties.

This position of criticising the Government, Mr. Poison said, he had hoped not to have to take up. With others he had wished to get farmers to increase production to the utmost. Britain needed it. Our task was to build up produce to the highest. It should be our purpose to concentrate on the war, but the Government was using the war as an excuse to carry its legislation. The legislation by which the Government took complete control of everything should be "for the war period only. Government control meant higher prices and. that" stagnated industry. The Prime Minister said that saving would save the country, so tearing up the policy on whicji his party originally stood, the policy of spending. He should resign; he should say, "we are in reverse." The British scheme of war saving was important; the weakness of Mr. Nash^s scheme was that the spender "got away with it" while the saver had to find the costs. The Dominion should plan ahead. It should build up supplies—storage, say, for two/years. A starving world would require food, and we should have the stocks to supply. New Zeaiand> should join with the rest of the' Empire for the interchange of goods. ' The Empire had a most important part to play and just as she would save the world now she would j be reariy to bring a .new and better order vnto existence after the thunder of battle was over.

or aA least help to do so. (His toys, how/ever—and .he should have no more and no fewer than the other children in the family have—.should be his own to treat as he pleases.) (5) Regular ]>ayment of a small sum of pocketmoney, about the expenditure of which the foster-parent may give advice but not instructions.