NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21347, 23 November 1932, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

SPEND WISELY "Spend wisely" rather than "save money" should bo our motto to-day, says a correspondent of the Times, whose letter secures prominence. Of what use is it to pile up bank balances, or even invest money in new enterprises, when the world is already glutted with stocks which it cannot afford to consume or, in other words, which it has not devised the means of exchanging? Surely it is better to spend money in providing men and women with work rather than in the payment of taxes to keep them in idleness and comparative poverty. In the first case, there is at least som_e return for money spent; in the second none, save the demoralisation of those who would gladly give their labour in return for a fair wage. Furthermore, most well-to do people are traders, either directly or as shareholders in trading conceins. They cannot expect to sell their goods and services freely, and thereby make money, unless they are ready to buy freely the goods and services of others. Production is obviously useless without consumption, and it is of vital- importance to set the wheel of consumption turning. Afterwards it can be left to run of itself. Vires adquiret eundo.

HOME-OWNING MOVEMENT The National Association of Building Societies in Britain have received the following message from Lord Snowden: — 'iThe progress of the building society movement during the last 30 years is one of the romances of modern times. By the help which this institution offers about one-fourth of the houses in this country are now owned by their occupiers. The social significance of this fact is tremendous. It has given to this large part of the population a feeling of security and independence. It has developed a sense of pride in the home; a desire to make it a reflection of the character and taste of the owner which living in a hired house can never give. It has encouraged the praiseworthy habit of thrift, for when the building society loan has been paid off saving is continued for the purpose of laying up resources for an honourable retirement. The building societies provide a safe investment for share capital for people of moderate means, who cannot afford the risk of investing their savings in speculative enterprises. Without the aid of these institutions the serious housing shortage at the end of the war could never have been met. The State owes a deep debt of gratitude to the building societies for their magnificent contribution to the solution of the grave problem of housing accommodation. It ia a movement which deserves the support and encouragement of all who believe that individual character is a nation's greatest asset."

INDIAN CONSTITUTION "The avowed intention of the leaders of the Government and Sir Herbert Samuel is to set up a responsible Government for all India, and Lord Lothian's report has outlined an electorate of about thirty-five million persons, mostly primitives and illiterates, who arc to express their tribal, racial and religious passions by putting coloured tickets into coloured boxes," says Mr. Winston Churchill in a letter to a Unionist colleaguo at the Blackpool conference. "Can we believe that this can form a foundation for the good government of India comparable to that provided by the Imperial Parliament ? Throughout the worldj in Europe and America alike, thinking men of all parties are losing confidence in the efficacy of mob votes and mass votes, with all the party prejudices and wire-pulling attendant upon them. Electors, even in the most educated democracies, are regarded as a misfortune and as a disturbance of social, moral, and economic progress, even as a danger to international peace. Why at this moment should wo force upon the untutored races of India that very system the inconveniences of which are now felt even in the most highly developed nations, the United States, Germany, France and in England itself? No important body of Indian opinion is asking for this plan. None will accept it as a settlement or use it except as a weapon of further warfare against the Imperial tie. Yet it is to this absurdity and catastrophe that we are being led step by step, inch by inch, not by Indian pressure, but by a kind of intellectual obstinacy which has obsessed our leading men. Of course you will be told to loow at the safeguards, safeguards which, if enforced effectively, would reduce responsible government to a mockery. But have we not learned by bitter experience the value of safeguards? You have only to look westward across the waves that wash the beaches of Blackpool to see the value of safeguards. You have only to read the terms of the Statute of Westminster to see how utterly devoid of legality is the foundation upon which they will stand. . . . Let us take our stand within the wise boundaries fixed by the unanimous report of the Statutory or 'Simon* Commission. If Indians wish to prove their greater fitness for responsibility let them first make a success in governing the great provinces of India, countries almost as large as France and Germany and Spain. Surely this is no unworthy task for untried hands. But let us keep intact, inviolable, the responsibility of the Central Government of India to the Imperial Parliament, and let «s admit no derogation, however small, from the supreme authority of the Crown.''