The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1917. AN OLD-TIME FALLACY.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 16 February 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1917. AN OLD-TIME FALLACY.

(With which is incorporated The Tuihape Post and Waimarino News).

. *m»— The conceptions of those who readily grasp the significance of figures will be somewhat staggered by the use made of them in recording the costs of the war. It is a veritable welter of millions, such as the world has hitherto had no conception of; but this is a record-breaking era, and we "may be less concerned and electrified by what has passed than by what is to come. Our purview is widening and broadening at such an alarming rate that many of us have not yet realised what the word may mean when war and its accursed effects have been only partially removed. We are reading war news—accounts of battles on this front and on that—and we have scarcely noted political and industrial changes that can never revert to the pre-war status. We read with setm rr ing indifference of the nationalisation of railways of shipping, of other industries that have rapidly, one alter the other, passed under the control of the State in an astounding and most un-. precedented way. This is an age bent upon doing unprecedented things, and it is not certain that extraordinary -happenings are not being disregarded in an unprecedented fashion. The State, to secure its very existence, has; been compelled to take control of men ey. manufactures, uuying and selling to such an extent that the narrations of its doings sound like pure romance. The cause of the State's action in this respect, en the contrary, sounds anything but romantic. With all the State control, and the limitations enforced to bring about economic conditions that would help to make the Empire purse meet requirements in saving us from 'dun clutches, our very conceptions are staggered by the millions and hunhods of millions that have been spent, and those that arc still needed before the destroyer is destroyed. If the British Govrnment had permitted monopolists, exploiters a>id profitmongers to pursue their ways of extortion from first to last the war would now have been over and New •o-lancl would have been a German -clony. Blinded by their greed, the

controllers oi?food shipping iandj accessories of war, entered upon a ccurse taat would have starved our armies to death, cr h CV e rendered them helpless to stand for three months before the armies of Germany. They would have been without food/ without munitions, without clothing an d without sandbags even, to keep off Hun bullets. i'lie Imperial Government, to save the

situation into which extortioners were

loroiug tne exercised uie power vesieu in it and took possession of the means of transit and transport, of iiiuustries and- commodities necessary to continue a vigorous prosecution of me war. What is the lesson taught $

me nation has realised taat its safety, its very existence was jeopardised oy a coimnuance of what is usually understood as private enterprise. Private enterprise would, in its greed, have landed the Empire in slavery. The Imperial Government found that private enterprise was so rotten with the canker of avarice that absolutely no dependence could be put upon it, that it was a national death trap with gaping jaws through Avhich lay German domination, and private enterprise was given a stupifying blow. Some of the most outrageous exploiters remonstrated, but it was a matter of national life and death, and they were heedlessly brushed aside. The jangle of the rights private enterprise is silenced, because it was found to contribute to the destruction of the Empire, and State control has taken its place, paying higher wages, producing, working and furnishing the wherewithal by which soldiers and civilians and their families are saved from the starvation and slavery with which they were faced. The Imperial Government saw German domination menacing it on the one hand and British greed on the other, one or other had to go. It was forcefully impressed upen the Government that the only way to feed the nation was to erase private enterprise and substitute State control, and it is this necessity that arose for the nationalisation of industries, and the extent to which it has already been carried, that we have not grasped the full significance of What was found to be urgent necessity in the Empire's greatest stress will be found essential to recuperation and a return to the normal after hostilities have ceased. We arc frequently having it cabled,* that the British world will never be the same as it was before war, which means that private enterprise as we now understand it, has prqvpd. its. utter vqlueJessness and that State control and co-operation will replace it at essential points; to be more correct we should say, has replaced it. Upon examination we find that there is little left for Government to add to its buying and selling list. We know all our meat, wool, hides, cheese, butter, and other produce, but in addition to these there is shipping, railways, wheat, flour, sugar, cotton, linen, metals, including iron, silver, lead, spelter and others, to say nothing of coal, the Empire's output of gold, shipbuilding. In fact it is time we "made ourselves cognisant of what hugely important changes are taking place, which have come to stay, and commence taking steps to adjust our life and action to conditions which they involve.