"WAR EFFORT" BOOK

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 65, 14 September 1943, Page 7

"WAR EFFORT" BOOK

PUBLICATION CRITICISED

Comment on the time chosen by the Government to publish a book on New Zealand's war effort, and the expenditure of money and paper in so doing, was made by Mr. T. C. A. Hislop (National, Wellington North) at the Molesworth Street Methodist Hall last evening. The Dominion's war effort, he said, was the effort of everyone in New Zealand and not that of one particular party, and the only object in issuing such a publication, which should have been left until after the war, was to influence people before the General Elections.

It was a peculiar thing, said Mr. Hislop, that the publication should come out only a fortnight or three weeks before the election. One did not write' about a person's life until he was dead or had reached that stage when his main activities were over and he was in retirement. Surely the correct time to write about the war effort was after the war, unless it was desired to create -the impression that New Zealand's war effort was the result of one party's activities. Everyone knew that paper was so short in the Dominion that the Press was restricted in its use and it could not be obtained for some essential purposes. Every candidate was allowed ten reams of paper for election needs. The booklet on the war effort, issued just before the election and in the middle of a great paper shortage, had taken 25 tons or 800 reams of paper, and the cost of the paper, printing, and distribution, in round figures, was £6500. And that money was not Labour Party money, but money belonging to the people of New Zealand, being used for a political party which had done no more towards winning the war than anybody else. The only purpose in publishing the booklet now was to* try to influence people before the election. »