GOVERNMENT POLICY.

Evening Star, Issue 22456, 29 September 1936, Page 10

GOVERNMENT POLICY.

TO TO EDITOR. Sir, —Having devoted itself to misrepresentation of myself and of the matter under discussion, the Welfare League now proposes to withdraw from the debate with the remark that my argument is “ too silly.” What a pity the league did not show in what way it was silly. It has carefully refrained from tackling the arguments advanced by me and seeks to dispose of the matter by general disparagement. For a body so keen on the people having all possible say in these things, the care with which the league avoids detailed argument is revealing indeed. It is now evident that the league writer is quite aware of the impossibility of proving the electoral campaign wrong, so, having cast a slur in a general way, ho slides out before he is cornered. 1 said before the league’s tactics are better than its arguments. The league comes in for criticism because it argues insincerely and presumes to attack all advanced ideas which threaten the power of the financial masters of today. I have not stated that “ the possibility of the demand does not matter.” What I said, as the league writer knows full well, is that, like the defects in any other piece of which man has invented, the expert in the precise field affected must bo able to fix it. The trouble to-day is, undoubtedly, in the money mechanism. The money mechanism is an invention of mankind for a specific purpose. Like a motor car or a suit of clothes, it has a definite task to perform. _ When it fails to: do the job for which it was designed we expect the expert affected to make such adjustments as are necessary to make it function properly. That is all the electoral campaign intends doing. The money mechanism is not functioning properly, for some reason. As those for whom the money mechanism was designed, we as voters, need not divide into several warring parties concerning what is the matter with the mechanism. We simply give orders that the defective machine be made to function properly. The Welfare League will not deceive thinking people by abusive sentences about this procedure being “ silly.” It is precisely because the Teague can see the sanity of the electoral campaign that it now wants to see the discussion lapse. But there is one way for the league to demolish the new campaign and so render its masters a great service. It can try to show that the trouble is in some other part of the mechanism than the money department, or it can show that money is something that man cannot interfere with because it is in the nature of a natural law over which we have no control. If the Welfare League cannot conclusively prove these things, then it will not be able to show why the people of New Zealand, and other countries, cannot give the order to the experts to adjust the monetary mechanism so that it functions properly. The mechanical adjustments by experts are no concern of the masses, and not even the Welfare League is prepared to say definitely that the money mechanism cannot be fixed. The electoral campaigner does not say that “ the possibility of the demand does not matter,” but that, like any other invention of man, the people can have alterations made in the money mechanism whenever they choose to give the necessary order.—l am, etc., A. September 28 s