PRIME MINISTER ATTACKED

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20722, 8 May 1937, Page 8

PRIME MINISTER ATTACKED

FRANKLY CRITICISED MR DOIDGE ASSAILS COMMENT By Telegraph—Press Association AUCKLAND, May 7 The first public utterance .of the Prime Minister (Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage) in Great Britain was frankly criticised by Mr F. W. Doidge when speaking to supporters of the National Patty In Hie Eden electorate this evening. "If there are more like it, we shall expect to see issued a volume entitled "The Indiscretions of Mr Savage Abroad,’ ” he said. Mr Doidge said that to the people at Home Mr Savage had declared: “We are determined to increase our trade; we are not going to be harnessed to the chariot wheels of any country,” “What does Mr Savage mean by that?” asked Mr Doidge. “Britain is the country into which we pour our primary products. Britain takes 90 per cent, of all we export. Without a sheltered market in Britain we should starve. Antagonise the British market and we annihilate the primary ; producer in New Zealand. “We aim to have our own monetary system in New Zealand,’ says Mr Savage. No one has yet succeeded in obtaining from Mr Savage a lucid explanation of what his monetary policy means,” continued Mr Doidge. “Mr Nash has ridiculed the social credit supporters, and Mr Semple declares that only a fool believes that money can be turned out like sausages out of a machine. Pledge Recalled "People at Home will be reminded by this utterance that Mr Savage is the Prime Minister who pledged himself to create and manufacture money,” continued Mr Doidge. "His latest declaration will add to the mystification of Threadneedle Street, where in the next three years we have to seek £17,000,000 in loan redemption.” Mr Doidge said that Mr Savage’s suggestion that the Empire had mishandled mandated territories would cause surprise, since his Government’s administration of Samoa had so lately been the subject of criticism in Geneva. “There is a hectoring note in Mr Savage’s observations about raising the status of the worker,” said Mr Doidge. “In Britain it has long been an accepted tenet that ultimately and fundamentally the objects of all honest political endeavour, in whatever country, must be the raising of the standard of life. As Mr Savage becomes better acquainted with the statesmen of St. Stephen’s, he may develop a little political modesty. “Mr Savage found it necessary to declare that there was no dynamite in his pocket. The trouble is that Mr Savage does not know dynamite—least of all political dynamite—when he sees it,” concluded Mr Doidge.