GOVERNMENT POLICY.

Evening Star, Issue 22448, 19 September 1936, Page 12

GOVERNMENT POLICY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir. —If the Welfare League’s arguments were as good as its tactics when replying to correspondents they would leave nothing to be desired l . The first paragraph is devoted to something I did not say. It was not an “ innuendo ” on my part that the league had “ulterior” motives or that any part of my case depended upon the good or bad character of league members. I made the direct charge that the Welfare League was more concerned with dividing the people than with their unity. That charge is not denied! except by an indirect confession that such tactics would be “ ulterior.” They certainly are, and the fact that the Welfare League is making it its business to combat the new interpretation of democracy as outlined by myself and others shows that it is concerned with keeping the people divided on the different “ ways ” of 'bringing about prosperity. It knows quite well that “ unity is strength ” and that the political party system means divided and wasted strength, with our oppressors retaining power by these means. We are not dependent on the statements I make in this connection. In the ‘Bankers’ Magazine’ of the U.S.A. for August, 1924, appeared this statement: —“ By dividing the voters through the political party system we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance. Thus, by discreet action, we can secure for ourselves what has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished.” Perhaps the Welfare League serves the ends of the people responsible for the above statement unconsciously, but it is serving them nevertheless. There seems to be no hurdle which the league will not attempt, and we are now informed! that there is no shortage of money in the world to-day. It happens to be the one and only thing of which there is a shortage, and even the brazen audacity of the Welfare League will not attempt proof that the people of the depression world are starving in the midst of plenty because they have enough money. The electoral campaign proposal certainly is to compel the money expert to devise some means whereby an adequate amount of money is made available to the people with which to buy the goods produced. The thing we call money is nothing more or less than a ticket, and the system whereby its use and exchange facilitates the consumption of goods or utilisation of services is a convention capable of alteration at any time we so decide. We have to-day the spectacle of the world suffering all the horrors of want when there is, actually, the greatest abundance imaginable, because the money convention is out of date. There can, among sane, humane people, be no talk of not being able to alter the system. What man has invented he can alter any time he wishes. So with the money system. So long as the people are divided and following all manner of “ isms ”, or parties, “ expending their energies in fighting over questions of no importance,” as the ‘ Bankers’ Journal ’ mentioned above puts it, no real progress eventuates. The voters, in the mass, are not monetary experts and cannot bo expected to decide on something calling for intricate and expert knowledge. “It is the function of democracy to decide policy, and its privilege to change policy, and to reject personnel. It is the function of . . . experts to administer, to devise ways and means of executing, policy. . . . The Social Credit electoral proposals seek to establish a mechanism whereby the electors can be consulted on questions of policy, so that the will of the people, which is the greatest common measure of their desires,_ each in order of preference, shall be given expression in legislation.” The league says that “ until we know the proposed means or methods we cannot judge as to whether they will work in practice. If it can disassociate the individual from the voter it will be seen that the latter, for obvious reasons, cannot decide matters of expert mechanism. As individuals some of us will be quite conversant with the defects in the mechanism and the appropriate remedy, but we have two separate parts -to play, and do continually play—that of individuals and that of electors. The latter have no standing or authority, or should not have, where expert training is required. The individual will provide the expert who wifi rectify defects. The masses are qualified_ to sav what they want, atuL when it is a matter concerning the simp.e adjustment of man-made rules like the money convention, we all know —with the possible exception of the WelfareLeague—that it must be possible, requiring only giving the necessary order to the appropriate expert.—l am, etc., September 19.