BRITISH SOVEREIGN RIGHTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24733, 9 October 1941, Page 11

BRITISH SOVEREIGN RIGHTS

TO THE EDITOR Sir,—lt is the opinion of the writer, that unless we, the people of New Zealand, are prepared now "to reason why," the doing and dying of our incomparable youth in the fighting forces will be in vain, as the fruits of victory will once again turn to rotting depression and frustration of real progress for the people as a whole. It is a fact that the community pays for all. once in human life and suffering plus the effort expended in our munition and service industries, twice by the crushing burdens imposed upon. it by the conventional necessity to liquidate the war debt, and yet once. again in the interest payments involved.

During the last war the national debt of Great Britain multiplied 12 times, from £650,000,000 to nearly £8,000,000,0000. On this debt since 1918 the British taxpayers have paid loan charges totalling £6,000.000,000, nr nearly as much as the debt itself, which is not only still owing, but had increased to £8,026,000,000 before the outbreak of the present war.

It is decidedly revelant to the above to quote the editor of the British bank officials' journal. Branch Banking, of Julv. 1938: "There is no more unprofitable subject under the sun than to argue any credit or banking points, because there are enough substantia] ouotations in existence to prove to the unitiated that banks do create credit without restraint, and that they do create the means of repayment within themselves." Are our leading industrialists, financiers, politicians, etc., intending to continue to prevent British sovereign rights from becoming realistically effective in the matter of automatic control of credit-power by an authority accredited by and serving the sovereign people as distinct from serving vested interests of whatever nature? I wonder. All the evidence accumulating at present points to the fact (hat the people's sovereign rights relative to the above have been, and are being, deliberately sold.—l am. etc.. Demesmeriscd.

Dunedin. October 4