PAYING AS WE GO

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23491, 31 October 1939, Page 10

PAYING AS WE GO

gj r —if a bridge is expected to serve for 40 years, is there any good reason why it should be . paid for while being built 9 If a war is expected to make the nation safe for 40 years is there any better reason for immediate paj m Costs are almost entirely a matter of human service, and it is human service we borrow whenever we incur debt. Should we do all the work ourselves, doing it as it is needed, or should we borrow the services of other communities? If a large part of our population is occupied-with military service, and with the manufacture of military supplies, the part of. the population remaining may find the task of carrj mg on all the normal work of society beyond its strength. It may need aid from without —and obtained on credit. Moreover, if one side is aided by borrowed supplies, and the other side refuses such aid, then those refusing to borrow may find themselves at a ruinous disadvantage, and the policy that lias no soundness in theory might well prove fatal in practice. Certainly it is impossible for us. • We must send a force overseas and our wonder-working Reserve Bank could no more supply an overseas force than a promissory note could feed a horse. Men overseas must be paid in sterling, or in French currency purchased with sterling, and almost all their requirements must be purchased with sterling. When wo cannot pay for the most necessary imports, cannot transfer our property or our money, cannot meet our most ordinary requirements abroad, how, pray, are we to equip and maintain a substantial overseas force, so enormously costly to maintain in modern war, without borrowing the needed sterling? Will, our financial geniuses kindly answer that question? J. Johnstone. Manurewa. ? i