CERMAN POSTCARD

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2570, 18 September 1915, Page 3

CERMAN POSTCARD

S l rj—l saw a paragraph in your issue or Monday referring to postcards, with verses "From Mother," which have been published. You are quite wrong in assuming that the verses Were published in Germany. They wero composed and published in Wellington, so buyers are really patronising local production and talent. The plain postcard, without tho verses, was certainly made in Germany, '.but was pui chased long before the war broke-out. Jt'urlher, it would be utterly ridiculous to suppose that tradesmen who had large steels of postcard® on hand I —forced on to them by competition and Hie exigencies or trade —would bo hurting Germany or battering England by destrj/ing them. Wo have them on hand; what are we to do with them? The public, in a time_of peace, wouldn't buy a single English card from a bookseller if patriotic or sentimental motives were the governing factors.. That means that all tradesmen must have-a certain amount of German stock in hand which, from the point of view of cheapness always | the enemy of patriotism) competes comI fortably with all other goods on the market. Also, how many of our printing houses of New Zealand are patriotic enough to produce- Christmas cards to compete with those "made .in Germany"? Let me tell you that all the stationors of God's Own Country are already .stocked with Christmas cards for tli6 coming season,, and most of thorn .''made in Germany.", Tho trouble with our patriotism is that it lies dormant when cheapness blows its trumpet. _ When wo are at war, then every individual suddenly becomes a patriot and demands that all tradesmen should immediately bocome bankrupts by burning their paid-for stocks of German goods ordered by command of "cheapness." The patriot doesn't go home and rip the. Gcrmaii paper off tho wall. Ho doesn't . tear tho Austrian buttons off his, or his wifo's, clothes, the lace off his wife's or daughter's clothes. He doesn't smash the child's toys' up with. a hammer. No! He demands that the tradesman from whom he has bought his German goods for years' must immediately give up the sale of all the rost of his stock, and become bankrupt because he (the customer) has suddenly become a patriot. German goods are being sold to-day in Wellington, and will be until the stocks are exhausted, or our manufactufors give us a locally-made article as cheap as German goods—l am, etc., . . . A. W. ORGAN. ~ Wellington, September 14, 191-1.