TAX ON BOOKS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 212, 6 August 1940, Page 8

TAX ON BOOKS.

MR A. P. HERBERT’S ATTACK. LONDON, July 26. Mr A. P. Herbert, in a characteristically humorous speech in the House of Commons, denounced the purchase tax on books, which he described as “the machine tools of education.” If- this tax deprived the public of one good, book, one new thought, or ono worthwhile invention, he said, it was bad and barbarous and should be amended. t, . , “The Chancellor (Sir Kingsley Wood), with geniality and affability, passes from one Industry to another like a cheery reveller staggering from pub to pub, nobody bothering to hinder him,” said Mr Herbert. “The Chancellor says the publishing trade must suffer like other trades. He is endeavouring to limit the consumption of domestic goods, brushes, brooms—and hooks. “Perhaps tho Chancellor also wishes to limit the consumption of Bibles and Prayer Books. If the niche for lus statue is still available in the Commons lobbies, he will go down as the first Chancellor to put a tax on tho Word °f God. “It has been said, ‘We don t want new books. Let’s take down the classics. Let’s have the old hooks.’ That was what the French generals said and what our last Government said. “Tho shades of Milton. Caxton, Sheridan, Dickens, and other bravo men who in tho last century fought for and won the principle of free enlightenment may well groan in their honoured graves, seeing the lamp they hung on the walls of Westminster clumsily torn down by a Chancellor who sees no important distinction between hoots and books.”