MR. MASSEY'S REPLY.

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2724, 20 March 1916, Page 7

MR. MASSEY'S REPLY.

Sir,—Mr. Massey, in reply to tho "Maoriland Worker," says that conscription of Wealth already exists. Now, tho Dominion is- about tho richest country in the world, on a population basis, yet. to equip an army of SO,OOO men we have to borrow, 1 believe, nearly half a million per mouth. This cortaiiily is not conscription of wealth. If Mr. Massey had said that the machinery for the conscription of wealth exists, but that the Government is too weak-kneed and spineless to put it in motion, lie would have hit the nail fairly on the head. In re tlio conscription of wealth-producing machinery, Mr. Massey'says that it would be inj'ust to conscript farms, because the land-owners have made the land in as complete a sense as journalists and printers mako a newspaper. Granted that that is so, is it any move unjust to conscript a farm (or a newspaper, for that matter) because labour has been expended on them, than it is to conscript a mother's son. who has had expended on him her labour, lovo, and tears? In Mr. Massey's reply we can see the trail' of the capitalistic serpent, which places property on a higher plane than human life and human happiness. It may not bo opportune at the prosent timo to conscript wealthproducing machinery, but that there would be any more injustice in doing it than in conscripting humanity can be apparent only to educated minds like Mr. 'Massey's or Mr. Vavasour's. This is a question which thousands of unionists and workers (of whom the writer is one) who havo no connection with either the "Maoriland Worker" or the 'Federation of Labour arc asking, and to them Mr. Massey's reply is worse than useless.

I notice that Mr. Vavasour (in writing to the local paper) tries to hide behind Mr. Massey's reply from the castigation which he has teen receiving for his vituperative attack on what he calls "the slavery of the working man"; but it would ho much better for Mr. Vavasour (prominent member, some timo president, of the Marlborough Farmers' Union) to lay tho old adage to heart, that "That those who live in glass' houses shouldn't throw stones."—l am, etc., UNIONIST. Blenheim, March 17.