WAR TAXATION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 16807, 17 March 1915, Page 8

WAR TAXATION.

WHO SHOULD PAY? TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, —Much prominence is'given, in your paper to an interview with a Mr Fowlds in which ho advocates tho application of single tax principles in the collection of a war tax. From letters

appearing simultaneously in most of tho Radical papers throughout the Dominion, including your contemporary, the “Star” of Saturday, evening, it would , appear that a concerted effort, is being made by the single taxers to seize

the question of a war tax as an opportunity of insinuating the thin end of their dishonest propaganda. Mr Fowlds’s unblushing proposal that the whole burden of New Zealand’s share of tbe Empire’s struggle against German domination should.be borne by 6148 persons of whom, needless to say, he is not one, is perhaps worthy of himself, but is one I should have thought the most craven shirker would have been ashamed to make. TVhat other name befits a well-to-do merchant who seeks to free his own back' from any share ill the cost of the na-

tion’s struggle by placing a double burden on the back of his neighbour, in many cases not so well able to bear it as himself P Mr Fowlds would appear to think that the. only man who makes a living out of _ tho land* is the owner, which is precisely what a haberdasher might be expected to think if he is a fool, ot to pretend to think if he is a knave. , A very large proportion of our soldiers at the front who have offered their lives in their country’s service are landowners or the sons of land-owners, great and small, and whilst they face the enemy and their backs are turned, these contemptible single taxers stealthily set about to filch away their birthright under a system of so-called taxation;- which is neither more nor less than legalised theft.—l am. etc., . ’GEORGE GOULD.