DIVIDING THE COUNTRY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23471, 7 October 1939, Page 10

DIVIDING THE COUNTRY

' A. most deplorable consequence of the Reserve Bank legislation is that it divides the country at a time of supreme emergency, when unity was never more essential. Responsibility for opening this wide and deep schism rests upon the Government. Had Mr. Nash been able to give compelling reasons for making revolutionary and dangerous changes in the financial system, his bill might have been accepted with reservations as a wartime measure. He offered no such justification, however. On the contrary, he said the bill was not a war measure. It would have been brought down in any case, the war merely providing an additional reason for its introduction. Surely this argument is unsound. A party political measure should have been avoided, if at all possible, at a time when the ranks should lie closed and an unbroken front formed against the relentless enemy. The present is 110 time for faction. Yet Mr. Nash has, by his own admission, seized on the emergency to forward a party move planned previously, a move which a substantial section of the people fears will sap the foundations of the country's financial and economic life. Suspicions aroused by the Marketing Bill are confirmed by the advent of the Reserve Bank Bill, suspicions that the national emergency is being exploited to promote the factional end of complete socialisation. Nor is Mr. Nash at any pains to' conciliate opposition by reasoned persuasion. His speech yesterday was assertive, aggressive, arrogant, provocative. In what is supposed to be a deliberative assembly, he took the tone of a dictator. TJ is autocratic temper disclosed itself when he declared that "the Government is to be the deciding factor in the ultimate in all things that affect economic and social life." Here is a statement of the complete totalitarian philosophy, the evil Nazi doctrine that New Zealand has gone to war to fight; here is the denial of that personal choice and individual freedom, that New Zealand Has gone to war to defend. Mr. Nash arrogates to the State the decision 011 all matters, just as ITerr Hitler docs. Although it i-s infinitely regrettable, it is no wonder that so high-handed a policy is dividing the country, a debilitating division for which the onus must rest on Mr. Nash,