REPLY TO THE PREMIER.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 9221, 25 May 1910, Page 7

REPLY TO THE PREMIER.

SPEECH BY MR. JAMES ALLEN,

FIRST OF A SERIES

INTERESTING REMARKS ON DEFENCE QUESTION. (Peb Pbess Association.)

MILTON, May 23. Mr James Allen, M.P., addressed a meeting of his constituents to-night, this being the first of a series of addresses by him in 'reply to the Prime Minister's ■Winton speech. Mr Allen said he would deal with only one or two parts of Sir Joseph Ward's speech that night, and at other places where he intended to speak he would refer to Other portions of it. Dealing with the Premier's charge of misrepresentation, he said the Opposition had constantly pointed out that the Government had been extravagant. The proof of what they had said was in his own admission that ho could save £250,000

a vear without impairing the efficiency of the civil service. The Opposition had said there were improper charges made on the public works fund, maintenance and repairs, and such liko. The proof of that was that gradually most of these had been transfencd oack to the on'solidated fund. THE GRADUATED TAX. With regard to the graduated land -tax | the Prime Minister had had to backdown over the remarks he made about Mr Massey. He showed no generosity J to those of the Opposition who got him out of his difficulty with regard to his Land Bill by suggesting, as they did, that the graduated land tax was the proper means of compelling the large estates to be divided up, with the result, so far as they personally were concerned, that large landowners who had been supporters of theirs dropped them altogether. As to "carping criticism," the Opposition has criticised, and would continue to criticise the administration of the' Government, and the bad legislation whenever they thought it bad. They would criticise the continued attempts to-lessen Parliamentary control; the adjournment of Parliament because the Prime Minister went to England; and if necessary they would continue to criticise the schemes submitted to the people which they believed to be misleading and involving the country in great responsibilities. He had year after year told the electors that some of the superannuation schemes put on the statute book by the Government were unsound, and that members relying on those funds were living in a fool's paradise. The proof that he was right was in last year's Financial Statement, where it was seen that the State had already to come to the assistance of nearly every scheme. The Opposition had criticised the absence of sinking funds for the loans, and had said the loans of the Dominion could be raised much more advantageously if sinking funds had been provided. "The proof that that criticism was sound was in the fact that the Prime Minister himself had now come round to that opinion, and in his speech at Wiinton declared himself in favour of sinking funds for every one of our loans. It was true the Opposition .had strongly criticised the various Land Bills introduced, but what did the Prime Minister's own colleague say with regard to the Bill of 1896 V That it was quite impossible to make it workable. As to "whining" over loans to local bodies, the Opposition-cer-tainly objected strongly to the repeal of the law which allowed the local bodies to get money for absolutely necessary development works from the Crown at 3£ per cent for forty-one years. The Opposition looked, upon it as the one means of mitigating the evils now perpetuated under the votes for roads and bridges in the Public Works Estimates. The Opposition criticiscd the Bill which dealt with assistance to local bodies last year, with the result that the Prime Minister had to modify his Bill, and the local bodies were now getting tho benefit of loans raised at a discount being considered as at par, and they had to pay the interest on the loans as though they had been raised at par with 1 per cent sinking fund for thirty-six and a half years. The amendments to the Old Age Pensions Act which encouraged the thrifty had been urged by Opposition members from the time the Act started. With regard to workers' homes the Prime Minister wished to take the credit Mr Massey was entitled to. Mr Malcolm gave the Prime Minister the lead in regard to land settlement finance. DEFENCE. In respect to defence, surely the Prime Minister had accepted a Jead from some of the Opposition. He realised with great satisfaction the change that had come over the Prime Minister's mind, and he wished to say that in the action he took last year, and in the action he proposed to take in the coming year, though he differed in details, yet on general principles he had supported the right hon. gentleman, and would support him, and had already stated that he was prepared to go on the platform and do so. He was entirely in accord with the proposals that the age of national service should be raised from twenty-one to twenty-five years. No doubt his audience was aware of the Act of last year, which so completely altered the system of defence, imposing as it did national service up to the age of twenty-one. He could not see how a territorial force on volunteer principles where their members were not sufficient and were supplemented by men being balloted in from the general training section, was going to work satisfactorily. The proposal to raise the age to twenty-five years would largely get rid of the difficulty. There were other details he had mentioned in the House, more with the hope of having them considered than with any idea of objecting to any Bill; such, for instance, as uniformity in establishment between ourselves and the Mother Country. The Prime Minister had pledged himself to this uniformity when he was at Home, and it was to be hoped it would be maintained. The "Gazette," however, made the peace establishment of a New Zealand infantry company 71, whereas the peace establishment of a Home infantry company was 120; the peace establishment of a battalion :n England was 71. and in the territorials 1009. So far it had not been made clear what the war establishment of a New Zealand infantry company ought to be, but it ought at any rate to be 120, and as far a 6 he knew them, the peace and war forces in this country were identical. If so, it appeared that New Zealand was not coming into uniformity with the Mother Country, with her infantry companies at, 71. Another difficulty arose with * regard to the selection of only 20,000 men for tho territorials under the proposed new scheme. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five there were some 65,000 men in the Dominion, and to select 20,000 out of the 65,000 was not an easy problem. As a matter of fact, tho Home authorities recommended 30,000 for New Zealand. His own opinion was that the way to meet the difficulty was to make the exemptions fairly extensive, and then to train the rest. This would get over the great difficulty of any selection by ballot or otherwise, which he did not believe for a moment would be satisfactory.

KITCHENER'S SCHEME. ' From what had been stated, Lord Kitchener's scheme was to be partially adopted. The Dominion wa» to be divided into twenty-eight less districts than Lord Kitchener suggested, which wae probably enough, and ten cadets were to be sent to the military college in Australia for training. One great difficulty would be the officering of the twentySight districts. He did not think they could find in New Zealand sufficient officers to properly take up these positions. If we could not, he would not hesitate to get them from outside until wo could train our own. The co6t. of the scheme was set down at between £350,000 and £400,000, which was, say, £180,000 above the present cost, and for this we certainly should get something like efficiency, which we did not have now. There was" another difficulty that had to be met, and he joined hands with the Prime Minister to pursuade his countrymen to meet it—the difficulties wtth regard to employment. There were bound to be

some hardships and some intereference with industry, but the protection that would be afforded to industry by an efficient force was, by way of insurance, a worthy one for them to meet, and everybody ought to join hands and try to meet it. The experience of other countries was that the interference with industry was not as great as anticipated. In Switzerland, for instance, where there was highly organised industry, employing many thousands of workers in every branch of technical industry, and standing as it did in tho forefront of modern nations both in the output per head and in the quality of its manufactures, they had found universal military training did not involve any appreciable interference with employment, and it was regarded by employers and employed alike as not only the just and natural system for tho defence of the country, but as a valuable contribution to physical and industrial education. • SUPREMACY AT SEA. Our defence depended, no doubt, in the first instance, upon supremacy at sea; -..-ccondly, upon efficient home defcncc; arid, thirdly, upon the power of mutual help. These were the principles laid down by the Home authorities, and they .could not be contraverted. We were preparing by our legislation, he hoped, for an efficient home defence, and possibly for-.mutual help in time of need. The Dominion had made provision to pay the cost of -an Indomitable—approximately two millions of money—with annual ckarges of £150,000 and £100,000 to help to man it. When ho spoke at Milton some time ago with regard to the Dreadnought offer he said he was entirely ill accord with assisting the Mother Country with a Dreadnought, or two, or moro if the need were shown for such; and he assumed that Sir Joseph had in his possession information which led him to make the proposal, .which information was not in possession of the people. He regretted to say that, in his opinion, the country had been somewhat misled overthis matter. At an informal meeting of members of the House before Sir Joseph .Ward went Home the question was discussed, and it was . clearly established that the Prime Minister had used influonces with the press—for what reason he knew not —but which certainly had had a very great effect in forming public opinion. A telegram was sent oil March 22nd last year, under strictly confidential conditions, to the editors o£' papers impressing upon them that tho suitation was much graver than was generally supposed, or had been published. With regard to this telegram he was bound to say it was treating members of the House in an unfair way. It led newspaper editors to believe that the occasion was much more serious than appeared from the evidence that came out. Sir Joseph Ward had not on tittle of evidence in addition to what had already been published to justify him in telegraphing as he did. That ho also influenced Cabinet in, he thought, an improper way was evidenced by the statement of Mr Hogg after he left tho Ministry, when he said "the matter was placed before him as one of great urgency, and an 'occasion of terrible crisis, and that they must come to the rescue of the Old Country."

SELF-RESPECTING NEW ZEA- ' LANDER. Regarding the decision of the Home authorities to place New Zealand's Indomitable on the China station, and to lend, so to speak, some of the cruisers, destroyers and submarines, as a self-re-specting New Zealander he could not view with any satisfaction the proposal to have upon the New Zealand coast these vessels paid for by British money and manned by ' British men. It would havo been very much better for us to have put our money into these vessels. They were intended tor the defence of our shores and our trade routes, and thus we would have had some national pride in them, and it would have been preferable to itaking everything on .t China Sea Indomitable. INCREASED TAXATION. The increase of expenditure upon defence the Prime Minister had used as a means for extracting further taxation out of the people. So far as he could gather, the increased cost on account of the defence proposals would be something like £300,000 to £320,000, but the increased taxation asked for in the Budget was £440,000. It would be readilyrealised that the defence proposals were not tho only reason for the proposed increase of taxation. Indeed, it would be found that tho superannuation schemes were making themselves felt upon the people as he (Mr Allen), had said they would —railway to the extent of £25,000 a year, police £5000, public . service £20,000, and teachers £7000 —and they knew in regard to the latter that it ought to be £17,000. If there had been reasonable care taken with regard to the expenditure, and some care shown in respect to remissions of taxation, there would have been no occasion.for further taxation. Tho surpluses during past years had, generally speaking, been fairly large, and taxation had been used for the purpose of assisting the Public Works Fund. He would not say that was wrong, but it was heroic, and certainly the extra amount raised by taxation had led to the extravagance going on. It was a pretty heavy burden to impose upon the people in one session when new taxation to the extent of 9s per head was placed upon them because for one reason the present Prime Minister and Treasurer had during his four years of .office inareased expenditure over his increased revenue to the extent of £215,000. That- sort of thing could not go on without increasing taxation. There had been increases of the graduated land tax, some of which the Opposition did not object to, though they certainly objetced to that portion of it which proposed 25 per cent extra on land not held for business premises, making an unfair distinction between town and country. Indirect taxation through tho Customs had fallen during the last ten years by 9.3 per cent, whereas direct taxation had risen that amount. The fall during tho 'ast seventeen years as regards the percentage of the total revenue wrs mostly in food and non-alcoholic drinks, namely, 20.05 per cent to 4.48 per cent. If he had time that night he could go over the various Acts dealing with the Customs, and show that every timo members of the Opposition party had done their utmost to reduce, the taxation upon food, and that more credit was due to them even than to the Government. THANKS AND CONFIDENCE. A vote of thanks was accorded Mr Allen for his address, and the meeting expressed its continued confidenccin bin: as member for Bruce.