WAR DANGERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 July 1939, Page 8

WAR DANGERS

ATTITUDE OF BRITISH LABOUR GOVERNMENT STILL BLAMED BUT ALL WILL HELP TO PUT OUT FIRE. APPROVAL OF DEFENCE PREPARATION. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day. 12.2 p.m.) RUGBY. July 14. The Bill increasing the guarantee power of the Board of Trade to enable credits totalling sixty millions sterling to be given to friendly foreign countries for armament and other purchases in the United Kingdom was given its second reading in the House of Commons without a division. The debate was notable for a declaration by a Labour spokesman, Mr Pethick Lawrence, who, speaking ol the figures of expenditure and loans attributable in the last resort to de' fence needs and policy, said they were of fantastic dimensions, but they should not conceal from themselves they might not yet be at the end. What, he asked, was the position of the Opposition in face of such facts and prospects, and he answered that they were like people living in a house and realising that those in charge were at last tak ing steps to make it unlikely that a conflagration would break out. Mr Pethick Lawrence added that they still thought -that if a fire broke out it would be due to the Government’s lack of understanding in days gone by, and that if it spread it would be due to the Government's failure to make earlier provision for extinguish ing fires in their earlier stages, but if a fire did threaten to occur it would be no longer a question of who was to blame, but of getting all hands to assist. Because Labour loved its country and because it believecT in democracy and liberty at home and throughout the world, the Opposition said to the Government: “If you are really going forward to make provision now to put cut a fire should it break out, we are bound to give you our help.”