DUEL BY DEBATE.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 1869, 13 March 1913, Page 7

DUEL BY DEBATE.

MR SHAW'S VIEW OP MR BELLOO AND A FARM. London, January 31. If we do riot re-establish the instiI tution of Property, we shall reestablish the institution of Slavery ; there is no third course. Tiiis was the proposition which Mr Hi la ire Belloc debated with Mr Bernard Shaw last night at the Queen's Hall, while Sir John Cockburn sat, watch in hand, and timed the speakers. The chief point made by Mr Belloc was: "If we da not manage to distribute the means of production, as property, among so large a number of the families of the State as to determine the soul and spirit of the State, then in the alternative we shall re-establish slavery that is the «compelling of certain families in a large number by positive law to work for the advantage of a privileged minority." Mr Shaw, who spoke with unusual earnestness commenced his reply with a scriptural quotation: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant, and remarked that that was the thing he would be most content to have said of him. Whoever shirked service was a thief and a beggar;, and the method of shirking was the 1 principal of private property. Both he and Mr Belloc wished to> abolish slavery. Mr Belloc's method bas to distribute private property ? his own was to abolish it, root and branch, and distribute service. The land varied from acre to acre in quality, and men were all unequal. These were the factors that destroyed this dream of a division of private property. Mr Belloc's system was just the old system that had corrupted the world. "What would Mr Belloc do with a ' farm?" G. B. S. asked. "I'll tell you what he could and would do with it. He would mortgage it." (Loud Laughter.)