MUNICIPAL MATTERS

Evening Star, Issue 22882, 14 February 1938, Page 13

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

TO THE EDITOE. Sir—“ Time for a Change” has a penchant for missing detail which makes all the difference. I certainly did not. blame him for criticising Labour under a, nom-de-plume. I criticised him for departing from the point at issue to sneer at a man’s birth, a totally different proposition. I never insinuated that he was either a Nazi or a Fascist. I spoke of one who was an internationalist, who had no British blood (a grievous fault according to him), and therefore anathema to all Fascists and Nazis. If “ Time for a Change ” likes to wear the cap don’t blame me. From the tone of his letter on© would think he was the only one in Israel who had not bowed the kne© to Baal. Your correspondent can tell me nothing about the Glasgow cars. I knew them under private enterprise, dirty and drawn by overworked mules when fares were high, and know the success now when you can travel in a clean electric tram for 18 miles for twopence and put thousands to the common good, and no •advertisements for “ patent foods allowed on them either. So much for Socialist or municipal control. Will your correspondent tell me why previous councils with no Labour in power withdrew the sale of concession tickets on the cars, as he so deplores? Your correspondent judges himself. He admits being anti-Labour, but takes offence when I label him Conservative. My opponent says if “I had worked as hard as he has.” What an assumption! How does he know how hard I have worked ? My employers and workmates are the judges, and I also have been content with just as little, never having spent a penny on sport in my life a lifelong teetotaller, who has not even attended a show half a dozen times in the last 20 years. Your correspondent thinks that hard work makes people wealthy. Most wealthy people to-day are in that position because babies don’t choose their parents. I do deny the statement that the Labour Party or I either am unpatriotic. We are patriotic to the working class and professional people who render useful service to society, but not to men who tax women on their wages and do nothing for them when idle, but put the proceeds to swell the dividends of freezing and insurance companies, gentlemen who deplore State interference. Had Labour done this it would be called graft straight out, and no innuendo about it. Another piece of business acumen to make wealth during whar voiir correspondent called the dark

years 1914 to 1918 was to supply the enemy with munitions and all othei necessities of war, while Anzacs ana Scots, too, were giving their lives in Gallipoli and Flanders, and many ot them Labour Party men. If time for a Change ” cares to come out :.iuo the open and debate I am quite willing to prove who has yellow phagocytes in the blood stream. The fact of British blopd or even Scottish blood does not necessarily make a man fit for any position. Let me quote Burns in what he said of another Scot, an anti-Labour man, and surely he won*t disagree with his patron:—> Bright ran thy race. 0 Galloway, Through many a far-famed sire; So ran the ancient Roman road, And ended in a mire. —I am, etc., Popoffski. February 14. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I once listened to a speaker over the wireless give a reason tor the attacks made on the Jews by the followers of Hitler. It was that they envied the Jewish race their superior racial characteristics of virtue, industry, and intelligence. I thought of that when X read ( Time ITor a Change’s gibes at Cr Silverstone, which will meet with the same fate as befell the excouncillors who circulated a pamphlet at the last election caricaturing Cr Silverstone. The electors then piaced Cr Silverstone on the councU with an increased majority, where his work on the Finance Committee proved him to be the right man for the job, and I hope he stays there to give unequalled service, your correspondent says many of us remember the dark days of 1914 to 1918. Yes, I recall that it was the first Labour Government in Australia that constructed the Australian navy and paid for it out of the note issue profits when the Commonwealth Bank was ■formed by it. This proves that measured by their own standards the antiLabourites have not a monopoly of patriotism or of financial ability. Your correspondent, “ Wide Awake, indulges in sob stuff, and refers me to “the burial of the guns,” which were obsolete 40 years ago. I am one who has no faith in the many anti-Labour Governments of the post-war days who in the ocean buried many of the best of our British Empire dreadnoughts, battle cruisers, and other war vessels, even though they had years of useful service ahead, and even though they played such a glorious part in the Great War. Through anti-I/abour Governments weakening in this way our best arm of defence, enemy dictatorships have arisen which menace our democratic ideals, as Mr Lloyd George, the wartime Premier, pointed out in Friday s ‘Evening Star/—I am, etc., J. E. M'Manus. February 14.