FUNDS FOR STATE ADVANCES. A WAR ANNIVERSARY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19397, 4 August 1926, Page 10

FUNDS FOR STATE ADVANCES.

A WAR ANNIVERSARY.

The fact that '4OOO applications for loans, amounting to over £3,000,000. are awaiting consideration by the State Advances Office cannot be attributed to any stinting of the resources of the department. When the Minister of Finance, at the beginning of last October, announced the issue of a domestic loan for its purposes, he confidently anticipated that by the end of the financial year the department would have disposed of the accumulation of applications, and would thereafter be able to conduct its operations on a normal basis. The additional capital was provided, £6,347,000 from various sources, and all but a few thousands of that amount was paid during the year to 6063 applicants. If the department is now seven months in arrears, the only explanation must be that the demand was revived by the Minister's promise that applications would be considered without delay. Such a result was only to be expected, since prospective, borrowers naturally turn to the State department which lends money at a lower rate than any, other institution or individual. As long as it is willing to make loans to all comers it will have a huge waiting list, and since the Government cannot undertake to supply the capital needs of the whole community the administration must decide upon some method of discrimination. During recent years, State advances must generally have been secured by those who were able to wait patiently for their turn, though care has been taken by the Government to secure priority for necessitous cases brought to its notice. This method of selection was, however, haphazard and inevitably partial. It was based upon consideration for individuals, not upon a broad principle of reserving these cheap State loans for purposes most likely to contribute directly to the national wellbeing. State advances to workers are hedged about with restrictions as to incomes and families that ensure the devotion of the available funds to the housing of those with a substantial claim to assistance. But there has never been any definition of "settler," with the result that the funds of the chief branch of the department have been largely secured by so-called settlers in the towns, often for purely speculative purposes. This weakness has been frequently emphasised; until it is remedied by such a definition as will reserve the settlers' advances to those actually developing the land and the pi'oductiori of the country, the administration of the System will be unsound from the national standpoint, and when a Minister hints that the arrears are being overtaken. the department will be overwhelmed with applications.

August 4 is a memorable day in our national calendar. It is the date on which, twelve years' ago, Britain declared war on Germany. There is no call to make the day an occasion of elaborate celebration. The world outgrows the habit of hating. We take less pride in enmities than did our fathers. Even signal victories, like those they won at Trafalgar and Waterloo, are recalled with easy willingness to account the foe worthy of some respect. French soldiers have halted at Nelson's monument in London and reverently saluted. There Washington has now a memorial. So, looking back over this last brief span of years, we are not content to account the Gorman an incorrigible villain, but try to understand what led him so far astray as to toast and crave "der Tag" when he would plant his foot on the neck of the world. This anniversary, therefore, stirs no riot of animosity. It equally fails to arouse any sense of humiliation, save as we know ourselves members of a great human family too prone to quarrel and not yet as able to live in amity as we hope to be. Rather is there in our hearts a deep, quiet, solemn satisfaction that, when the occasion unhappily arose, we took our stand against an onslaught that outraged civilisation and threatened to overthrow it. Much has been said as to who was responsible for the war. There may still be argument about that. We are not seriously concerned in the question. Of one thing we are invincibly sure: had we shirked the issue and failed to throw in our lot with the nations attacked, we should have been culpably and cravenly wrong. Britain's plighted word was kept. The cost of that fidelity was greater than we can sometimes bear to think, but the price of unfaithfulness would have been great beyond reckoning. From that shame we were saved by Britain's instant and unfaltering answer to the challenge, and throughout the Empire it is felt today that, in the circumstances, the only honourable thing was done. For this reason the day cannot be forgotten, nor ought it to be,,