WILL NELSON FAIL?

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 2 October 1944, Page 4

WILL NELSON FAIL?

THROUGHOUT the Nelson Postal District are business organisations and individuals who have either subscribed nothing to the Victory Loan or have made merely a token response. All of them have a duty to reconsider their position before Wednesday night, when the Loan closes. In any kind of voluntary effort the willing horse always has to do part of the work of the one who holds back in the shafts and this spreads the burden unfairly. Yet it is not pleasant in time of total war to have to think of defaulters on the home front—people who, through apathy or indifference, or simply because they have not put the question squarely to themselves, neglect or refuse to lend money which they have or could make available. Many in the Nelson area have responded to the limit of their capacity. Though the reduction in the district and therefore in the subdistricts’ objectives by ten per cent will provide some relief to the hardworking committees, Nelson still has a long way to go if it is to be atye to say on Wednesday that it has filled its quota. If we fail it will take a good deal of the gilt off last’year’s resounding success. Nelson’s fighting men abroad will not care to hear such news from the home front.

The objective can still be reached if everyone in town and country will face up to the challenge which now presents itself and invest every penny they can spare without delay. This may be New Zealand’s last war loan; certainly it will be the biggest and, in the lives of us all, it is to be hoped there will never again come a set of circumstances when it is so necessary for our money to fight as it is now. The money is in the hands of the Nelson people; what is required to make our share in the national effort worthy of us is the will to lend it.