Dear Sir,

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 2, 22 July 1946, Page 4

Dear Sir,

Letters to the Editor must be clearly written on one side of the paper only and where a nom-de-plume is used the name of the writer must be included for reference purposes. The Editor reserves the right to abridge, amend or withhold any letter or letters. HOSPITALITY TO SEAMEN Sir, —During the last eighteen months 3047 British Seamen have enjoyed the hospitality of farmers in the holiday scheme organised by the “Flying Angel” Missions to Seamen at Auckland:

Many of the farmers in your district made their homes available to sailor visitors. In future the number to go on leave will be much smaller, so I am asking your kindness ;n allowing me to thank these good folk through the columns of your paper. Members of the W.D.F.U. and Women’s Institutes throughout the Province have also earned the sincere thanks of the seamen for their gifts of woollen goods and other valued donations. :. v ; ’ . -

Many hundreds of • pounds . were spent by our country friends on behalf of the sailors. For this reason we feel that the “Flying Angel Mis* sion” cannot take any part in making a general public appeal in the country for funds. We are most grateful for what the country people have done and are doing on behalf of the men and boys to whom we owe such a debt. Yours faithfully, CANON H. K. VICKERY, Port Chaplain. WHAT IS DEMOCRACY? Sir,—lf the State controls or plans production, industry and distribution, then, and I presume Mr Bradshaw will agree, there can be no democracy for all advancement in life is dependent upon subservience to the state planners. Similarly, if the State, controls the granting of credit to individuals then again financial or economic existence becomes dependent upon subservience to those who decide which individuals shall obtain credit. The swiftest and most effective method of destroying a democracy is to vest in the State the” full control of the monetary system for no one could exist financially

who did not support those who have the sole decision as to who is to obtain credit. It was the vesting in Hitler of the full control of banking that brought about a position in which all those who had most bitterly opposed him had not only to support him but had to contribute financially to his party in order to exist.

Mr Bradshaw knows that the “democratisation” of the means of production and distribution is an illusion for it results not in democracy but dictatorship. Similarly, the “democrat satio'n” of the means of exchange (the money system) has the same result. It is only when the control of the means of production, distribution and exchange is not unitary but widely spread and operating under the force of competition that democracy can exist. Mr Bradshaw persists in the fallacious' idea that our money system is controlled by some foreign finance power. Our money system is under the complete control of the Government which can expand or contract credit at will and per medium of the Re-

serve Bank controls the credit activities of the Trading Banks. The banks are directed generally as to the purposes for which advances are to be made but not as yet as to which individuals are to have credit. The Bank of England has since 1931 been completely controlled by the State and is now a State concern. The Federal Reserve Bank is now a State institution. Each government is in. control of the financial policy of its country, is in control of the volume of money but as Major Douglas, the chief architect of monetary reform points out if the competitive system operating between the Trading Banks be abolished and the monetary system completely nationalised then “it would create a power in Government that could only be broken by military revolution.” Yours etc:, - ONLOOKER. NURSES FROM EUROPE - Sir, —I .was rather amused when I read in the Beacon that the Hospital Board were suggesting bringing young women from Europe to train as nurses. The remedy lies in their own hands give them a decent living wage,‘then they"would get all the nurses they want and the type of girls they want. Every other worker is studied, but the poor * (Continued in previous columnl