The Star. Delivered every evening by 5 o'clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Opunake, Otakeho, Manutahi, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, Waverley. MONDAY, MAY 28, 1917. TRADE IN WARTIME.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXII, Issue LXXII, 28 May 1917, Page 4

The Star. Delivered every evening by 5 o'clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Opunake, Otakeho, Manutahi, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, Waverley. MONDAY, MAY 28, 1917. TRADE IN WARTIME.

A writer in a London paper brusquely enough states that (<with its usual method of annoying traders as much as possible and helping them as little as it can, the Government, without any warning, has cut off the gold supply from the jewellery trade." Then, on the action of the Government in the matter and on his own opinion of that action as here expressed by him, he enlarges with considerable causticity and not a little common-sense. However, he avers that his chief purpose is to ascertain whether, under the circumstances created by the war, the British' people have reached the point when they may no longer expend labor on the manufacture of expensive furniture, or gramaphones, or costly articles of dress, or a thousand other things on which they are at present expending considerable «urns. In his opinion, the people can afford luxuries or they cannot. If they can, or if they afford a certain amount, then, in his opinion, any restrictions which may be placed upon those luxuries should, in common fairness to the traders concerned, be apportioned equally, and no one particular trade should be called upon to bear the .whole burden. If, on the other hand, the people cannot afford luxuries, then, instead of going about by devious ways as the Government has done in the case of the gold supply to the jewellery trade, they are entitled to a plain, businesslike statement. The commercial classes of the country are, he says, absolutely sick of generalities. They are utterly weary of largo placards on the hoardings, inviting

them not to ride a motor-car for pleasure, telling them that extravagance in clothing is bad taste, beseeching tiiem not to consume too nnicn coal, too much electricity, too much gas. if they are conscientious, they endeavor to follow the directions of the advertisers. If they are not conscientious, they take no notice of them, except possibly to remark on the "foolish waste of money. In the writer's opinion, it simply works out that the decent citizen goes without, and the non-decent citizen carries on just as he did before. If the people may not be extravagant with coal, and the Government are the curators of the national coal supply, then the Government should say exactly how much coal may be allotted to a household, with special provisions, of course, in cases of sickness, or a young family, or any other extenuating circumstance, which would warrant an extra allowance, li the Government says they shoudl not dress extravagantly, then it should go further and say how much dress the people may have. If the jewellery, trade cannot be tolerated, because of its waste of labor on the one hand and the consumption of the gold supply on the other hand, then the Government should call together the jewellers in quite a friendly conference, and tell them that, as a pure business proposition,, they will have to close down. He adds that the rotten part of the Government is that it adopts underhand methods; it intimidates the weak; it appeals very vaguely and indefinitely to the public to do the things it thinks that public ought to do; but it does not govern. Democracy is a very beautiful thing in normal times; democratic government is not always possible in a European war. We do not (says the writer, speaking for the people) want to be advised what to do. We want the Government to take the highest expert opinion on any given subject, whether it be labor, material, food, or anything else; then, having made up its mind as to what is the best thing to be done with the particular commodity, to insist that it shall be done. In Germany people do not read placards reminiscent of their early days at Sunday school. They re- ] ceive orders, and those orders have to be carried out. Why cannot they do the same in England?' If it be replied that Britons are too individualistic, that they have been trained in an atmosphere of personal liberty, and that, in short, they reserve to themselves the right to do as they like with their own, it is only necessary to point out that they have abandoned that theory entirely as far as conscription for the army is concerned. If they may apply the principle of compulsion to five millions of their strongest, best, and most able citizens in the matter of compelling them to undergo the most terrible hardships, and, in many cases, to face certain death, surely they may apply at least an equal measure of compulsion to the people who stay behind. There can be no arguments advanced for compulsorily sending men in many cases to certain death which will not apply equally to compulsion in the regulation of * the conduct of those left behind. After all is said and done, we are at war. We have got to win the war, and these arguments are just as applicable here' in New Zealand as they are in England.