TO HIM THAT HATH...

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26626, 24 November 1947, Page 4

TO HIM THAT HATH...

In the newspapers and periodicals, over the air, on posters and hoardings, the people of New Zealand are being exhorted to assist Great Britain. The appeals are skilfully directed and striking: they are aimed at the heart of New Zealand, which is a generous, though perhaps somewhat self-centred, organ. They urge hard work and sacrifice in a cause which, viewed either as a humanitarian cause or as one that must, in the economic sense, be assisted for the ultimate good of this country, deserves every effort that New Zealanders can expend on it. To what extent the people are responding to the “Aid for Britain ” appeals it is perhaps difficult to say. Very many people are spending their own time and money, and some part of their portion of rationed foodstuffs, in order to assist friends or strangers in the United Kingdom. To an extent that is not immediately calculable there is, presumably, a response to the requests to increase production and speed its despatch to Great Britain. But while the aid to Britain National Council aims its appeals at the heart of the New Zealander, the Government of New Zealand is taking care that they will not hit them in the stomach. The announcement by the Minister of Supply, Mr Nordmeyer, that there will be extra butter and lamb rations for Christmas is one of the most extraordinary—and shameful—that has come from the Government in a long time. In the world to-day are hundreds of millions of people who never have enough to eat. Our kinsfolk in Great Britain, the country which New Zealanders have every reason, practical and sentimental, for holding in the highest regard, are subsisting on mean and meagre rations while endeavouring to bring about a recovery which must be fuelled by the produce and the goodwill of those who are in a position to help. And our Government’s Christmastide gesture to a starving world, and to the hard-pressed British people, is to retain for consumption by well-fed New Zealanders huge quantities of food. What the British people will think of this gesture need not be conjectured. They will, presumably, accept it politely; but they cannot be expected to consider it admirable.

Of more corjcern to New Zealanders is what they themselves may think and do about it. Will they agree to take this butter bribe, given to them at the expense of those in need? Or will they reject it? Will they ask the Government to pack up the butter and the spring lamb—or its equivalent in exportable mutton —and the transport servants and the waterside workers and all those others who are in a position to help, to speed it on its way to Great Britain? There is an opportunity here, surely, for New Zealanders to show that they are conscious of their favoured position in a world in want, and ready to give their Government a lead in fulfilling their responsibilities to others. The Aid to Britain Committees in New'Zealand, with or without support from the central organisation, will be failing in their charge if, without protest, they countenance this humiliating Government handout, and the people of New Zealand will be behaving ignobly if they accept it.