PAY! PAY! PAY!

Observer, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5, 6 October 1917, Page 2

PAY! PAY! PAY!

Fernleaf's Fortune

THERE is nothing much to cavil at in the N.Z. War Pensions Amendment Bill if the pensions scale set out in its schedule is not susceptible to the irritating "review" so dear to the official mmd 1 and if the official does not insist on limbless men parading before fullfed and full-limbed sinecurists to see if their limbs have sprouted again. It is rather curious to observe that a disabled soldier is considered to be able to carry on on £2 a week. As no man not disabled' can carry on with so little in a country where the shark is frequent, this particular clasjs of man is worth considering. You may say that this disabled man if he has a wife and children may set even £5 a week, but there are any number of smashed men who have fought valiantly and well to whom the £2 per week will be insufficient.

The confirmed pessimist is already asking how New Zealand can afford to aot so generously to soldiers and their dependents. The answer is that N..Z. cannot afford not to treat them generously. The person whofears the country isn't going to be able to stand the racket is the person who liasn't stood any racket and has had full and plenty while Fernleaf has been - "slathered up" (asFernleaf says). Mr Massey, who, one expects, is personally canny, utters the usual arave warning about going too far, but no politician ever utters any grave warning about going too far with utterly unproductive work, or marble houses of talk, or railways that end in the wilderness, or fat increases to sinecurists. It is good to find that John Government has been forced to regard Tommy Fernleaf and his maimed body with greater financial respect. John Government, which increases the scale of pensions to the soldiers by whose grace John Government survives under the British flag, foresees increased taxation to enable the pensions to be paid. John Government, with equally piercing: insight, foresees that when taxes on commodities are increased, the handlers of these commodities will "pass it on." Inevitably in these increases the seller of goods not only passes the whole of the tax imposed by the Government on to the buyer, but super-taxes the buyer. In every case a new tax imposed by the Government is increased profit to the profiteers. A paragraph elsewhere shows that a British article bought in Egypt and sold at a profit was purchased for £1 16s. In Auckland, a similar article .greatly inferior is sold at £6 6s. There is no reason under the sun why John Government should not get out after the scalp of the robber, who objects to the increase of soldier's pensions with an axe.

There is no doubt whatever that John Government continues to have early Victorian delusions. Sir James Allen, for instance, declares that soldiers at the front require less money than most people suppose. Most people suppose that Tommy Fernleaf (or Atkins, or Cornstalk, or Maplebloom, or Springbok) is just the same kind of human being in Cairo, Cannes or Oourtrai as he is in Capetown, Christohurc'h or Cootamundra. We. suspect that when, Fernleaf has cabled to N.Z. "Send me £20," he was being very wicked indeed. He wanted to spend in a fortnight's leave a sum a Minister would charge the country for two hours' fling. The N.Z. Government, which issues a serious warning about excessive expense puts thirty guineas' worth of parson per week on a single hospital ship.

Don't get it into your head that the Government is being generous. It is you who are asking the Government to spend your money on your fathers and brothers and their dependents. Please do not regard a passing politician as a person who is making a cash sacrifice. You are paying him for spending your money. If the Government can make hard! and fast pensions, it can dictate to habitual thieves who will super-tax us when the Government imposes new taxes to meet pensions, the maximum profits, they shall bleed the public for. There is nothing wickeder in the way of exploitation when the . Government has imposed say, a, penny tax on doormats for anything else) for the seller of doormats to increase the tax to 3d. This is the class of man on whom John Government should turn its glassy eye. He'is at present carefully hand-fed and nobody is asking him to bear his full share.