BOOK OF THE WEEK

Taranaki Daily News, 20 June 1931, Page 13 (Supplement)

BOOK OF THE WEEK

A TOPICAL SUBJECT

(By

C.E.)

" The Truth About The Stump,” written and published by A. N. Field, Okiwi Bay, Croixelles, Nelson; through Thomas Avery and Sons, Ltd., New Plymouth. I venture to indicate that the subject of Mr. Field’s book is topical though he gives it the curious subtitle, “What The News Never Tells.” It would, of course, be easy to rejoin that what news doos tell is facts, and therefore a great deal of Mr. Field s matter could not qualify for publication in a reputable journal. But that perhaps would suggest downright condemnation of “The Cause of the Slump,” which is not my purpose. At 4s a copy it is cheaper than many novels and really quite entertaining, and in parts informative. Mr. Field opens with a recital of some simple facts about money, which most readers will find helpful, for he puts them very well. He goes on to explain that one commodity, gold, controls all others, wherefore the only thin" one has to do if one wishes to control all prices is to control gold. “If you can control gold,” he says, ‘ you can make a general fall in prices by locking the gold away, and you can make a general rise in prices by letting the gold out again.” The argument, is that bv gaining control of gold a private individual could become “more powerful than any government in the world.”

The next chapter bears the alluring heading, “Some Tricks of the Trade,” among which Mr. Field gives pride of place to the fixing of the gold standard. But this is merely setting the stage for the entrance of the villain. We are to learn next “where we are ruled from,” and for that purpose we must read references to the establishment of the United States Federal Reserve Board. Mr. Field refers us to many writers, none of whom “has any doubt as to where or how the world’s gold money is managed to-day.” '‘The institution that controls it,” he roundly declares, “is the United States Federal Reserve Board, a body established in 1913 as the chief part .of a plan of banking reform enacted by Congress in that ye&r.” By this time the reader is in the right frame of mind to suppose that if the board controls gold someone is sure to be controlling the board, so it is without surprise that he turns the page and finds himself facing “The Men at the Top”; facing them, that is, as they appear through Mr. Field’s spectacles. They would prove, viewed in 'this perspective, to be an exceedingly interesting lot if I had room to transport them°into this column, for these great financiers' surely are fit subjects foi study. Unfortunately I have only reached page 3S in a book of 200. pages and must make the pace a little more judiciously than I have been doing. It is with reluctance that I leave Mr. Paul Warburg, Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, Mr. James Stillman the elder, Mr. Otto H. Kahn, and the rest of the gallery, but at least I hope that mention of the names will persuade readers 1- investigate for themselves what Mr. Field has to say as to the histories of these gentlemen and their enterprises.' It must suffice for me to say that these controllers of gold and the organisations with which they are associated are put forward by Mr. Field as the originators of the present economic depression. Not that he has made that discovery for himself; he has merely brought together from a number of sources many things which, as he would put it, “the news never tells,” and built upon them a certainly ambitious theory. There is, as one would expect, “the German side of the story” of these German-Jew financiers, who, Mr. Field shrewdly suspects, engineered not only the slump but also the Great War. and the Russian revolution, drew Britain “into the toils” and to-day are subjecting her to a ‘‘strangle-hold”, in the best style of the wrestlers with unpronounceable names. Even thp great Henry Ford, it seems, is not safe when they are on the warpath, and he has incurred Mr. Field’s very serious displeasure by withdrawing a libel which a newspaper of his once published about these people.

To put the story as briefly as possible, and quite fairly to the author, the suggestion is that the German-Jew financiers are out to gain control over the whole world in the fashion laid down by the utterly discredited “Pro-, tocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” One is left in doubt as to whether the chief objective of their enmity is the British Empire or Christian civilisation, but perhaps that does not matter a great deal. The ultimate result at any rate promises to be the crushing of all authority and the enslavement of the people of the world. Just what good that would do the German-Jews I am, I must' confess, at a loss to discover, nor am I any better informed as to' what benefit they could, hope to obtain from the possession of all the world’s gold, unless they are like the fictional miser who gets all the pleasure he wants out of life by sitting with useless gold heaped up all around him.

However, it may lie only my own. obtuseness that is to blame and other people may be able to follow Mr. Field’s argument more satisfactorily. If they have had any previous acquaintance with his subject they will realise that he has been most diligent in collecting his material, and from the mass of information which he must have perused he can have found it no easy task to. discard everything that did not support his case. That is a dangerous process at any time, and Mr. Field’s method is so glaringly obvious that one is inclined to be quite out of patience with him. It is difficult to take as seriously as he takes himself a writer who asserts that “by guile and deceit,, and based on human greed, sloth and stupidity, has the great and far-flung structure of the money power been built until to-day it controls the whole world.” Mr. Field has been extremely industrious, and in these days of restricted output that may be counted to him for a, virtue. One could wish, however, that his industry had produced more convincing results. The following new novels (among others) at 6s each arrived by the last mail: Dancing Death, Bush; Sunset Pass, Zane Grey; Many Ways, Margaret Pedler; Rum Alley, Pollard; Into the Land of Nod, Vachell. Obtainable from Thos. Avery and Sons, Ltd., Devon Street, New Plymouth.*