DEBATERS CROSS SWORDS

Taranaki Daily News, 2 June 1934, Page 7

DEBATERS CROSS SWORDS

SOCIALISM OR CAPITALISM? PESSIMISTS OF THE PAST. . “There is nothing around us but ruin and despair!” said William Pitt. Queen Adelaide desired only to play the part of Marie Antoinette in “the that was coming on England. Wilberforce dared not marry because the future was so dark and unsettled. Lord Shaftesbury prophesied shipwreck for the Empire. Disraeli saw no hope in the future of commerce and agriculture, ana the Duke of Wellington, to cap it all, thanked God the day before he died that he should be spared seeing the consummation of the ruin that was gathering about him. In the enthusiasm of the great pessimists of the past, Mr. W. J. Hall sought to justify capitalism under which progress had been made and point that this depression was after all no worse than other depressions at a public debate before a keenly interested audience in the Whiteley Hall, New Plymouth, last night, moving that “socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange would be disadvantageous to the people as a whole. The debate was the outcome of Mr. Hall’s challenge to Mr. W. J. A. Farnell, New Plymouth, to contest the matter in public, following an address delivered by Mr. Farnell at the Workers’ Social Hall. Mr. Farnell regretted to hear that the Duke of Wellington had been so “down” the day before he died and roundly affirmed that the salvation of the world lay in Socialism and Socialism alone.

It was an evening such as amateur politicians love and the future of society was determined along two diametrically opposed courses with irrefutable reason and to the satisfaction of everybody. The speakers were impartially applauded, deluged with questions, relevant and otherwise, and when it was all over neither the “slave of the capitalist” nor the “unit of the proletariat” was remarked substantially to have altered his opinion. Mr. J. H. Sheat presided.