THE FINANCIAL MACHINERY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21600, 22 March 1932, Page 12

THE FINANCIAL MACHINERY

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In his latest letter the Rev. W. W. MacArthur gives .fresh evidence of his rare ability to strip off the complex mass of extraneous considerations that encumber economics. To the man of Christian faith it is an axiom that a God Whose love was portrayed in Jesus could not ■will war and starvation for the lot of His servants. The honest Agnostic, seeing abundance beside want, would ascribe misery to human agency. . The atheist has no option. So is unanimous that Mr MacArthur is right in blaming our faulty system of distribution. Nor is it the mechanics of distribution that is at fault. Our road, rail, and water services are efficient enough. Clearly, then, it is the financial machinery that is out of gear. And if those who control it allow it to run wild and make havoc, what option have we but to dismiss them? '• ~ It may be that the practical problems of reconstruction are for business experts. But if they be not guided by right principles, how shall they succeed better than those who have brought our distress upon us? Not every man who wears the cloth is the blind bigot some would picture him. The man who communes with the spiritual, who makes his faith live tiucl work through his daly life, is he not more likely to grasp the laws of harmonious social life than his brother who whirls m an intoxication of activity? Superficial thinking, the order of our day, prevents us from dipping into the ocean of fundamental truth. If we be better than swine, let us pick up the pearls cast before us by one who patiently has gathered them from the exhaustless storehouse of eternal verity.—l am, etc., Mac G. Walmsley. March 21.