THE LIBERTY LOAN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25275, 12 July 1943, Page 2

THE LIBERTY LOAN

There was ample justification for the enthusiastic terms in which the Minister of Finance, in a national broadcast, last evening announced the heavy over-sobscription of the Third Liberty Loan, The goal set by the Government for this warpurposes loan, £35,000,000, was unprecedentedly high. It set a task which, at the outset, the National War Loan Committee and the district committees throughout the Dominion might have had reason to contemplate, with some misgivings. But the Government’s confidence, both in the people of New Zealand and in those who were required to undertake the organisation and direction of the nation-wide campaign for subscriptions, was clearly not misplaced. Present returns suggest that the amount by which the loan will be over-subscribed will approximate £5,000,000. Already the £4,000,000 over-mark has been passed, and it is Mr Nash’s expectation that the final figures will not be available until about the middle of the week. This is indeed a gratifying result, not less from the point of view of the grand total realised than from the clear evidence provided of a loan effort on a truly national scale. In one of its earliest statements the National Committee pointed out that the last war loan raised in Canada had the backing of some 2,000,000 subscribers, or 20 per cent of the population. To equal that record, it was indicated, New Zealand’s £35,000,000 loan would need the support of 300,000 investors. Mr Nash was in a position to claim last evening that even the Canadian response, had been surpassed in the Dominion, the present count of subscribers, including purchasers of £ 1 bonds and depositors in national savings ‘accounts, totalling 419,763. The Otago district, it is pleasing to note, takes an honourable place among the leaders in the campaign, with a present total representing an excess of 12 per cent, on its target figure. In all, the response to the loan appeal gives cause for solid satisfaction, especially in the assurance that it provides of continuing stability on the “ home front.”