NOT BEST POLICY

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 May 1931, Page 5

NOT BEST POLICY

CHEATING THE GOVERNMENT. “Honesty is honesty; stealing from a private individual, from shops, and from hotels is theft. But tricking a railway company, riding on a tram without a ticket —evading income tax or misappropriating Government stationery, though it may be theft in the eyes of the law and graft in the eyes of the prophets, is not quite theft in the eyes of the man-in-tlie-street,” says “Time and Tide.” “The traveller from the Continent who smuggles through the Customs a little scent, a few pairs of silk stockings, or a banned book still regards himself as a hero rather than a villain, and Mr St. John Ervine’s recollections of the attitude towards Government property which he discovered in his Army life could be matched by those of thousands of ex-service men and women, who were prepared to ‘win’ from the Army withput a qualm of conscience, blankets and groceries, equipment, or Keating’s powder. “What belongs to the Government, or to a concern large enough to seem as important as the Government, belongs to no one, and so belongs to everyone. From us it came, to us in some form or other it will return; but the form may not be one of which the individual approves. A dark suspic ion of Government expenditure is deeply ingrained in almost every hi habitant of these islands. With Mr A. P. Herbert, we are all apt to sing: — “ 'Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might, as well have put it down the drain. Fancy giving money to the Government! Nobody will see the stuff again. Well, they’ve no idea what money’s for — Ten to one they’ll start another war. I’ve heard a lot of silly things, but, Lor! Fancy giving money to the Government!’ “Now, this is all very well, and very, very human; but as a working standard for a nation in our present stag© of cultural and politico-economic development ft is no more use than a sick headache. Whether we like it or not, public parks, schools, medical services, museums, Lidos, and what not —plays a larger and larger part every year in our national life. “The truth is that if we are going to make our present system of public organisation and publip services work, we shall have to revise the commonly accepted moral code to match it. We shall have to learn to respect property, whether owned by the Government, a railway company, a municipality, or a foreign State, just, as we have learned to respect private possessions owned by an individual. The lesson is not impossible. “But the case is important because ihe transitiofi must be made. At present hundreds of otherwise honourable cheat the Government or the large corporations in this country because they feel no shame in doing so. Graft on a large scale we despise; graft on a small scale we wink at. And we cannot afford to do so. To trick the Government is to cheat the whole community. . . We shall have to be more careful than we have been in the past to adapt our private morality to our political system.”