The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1917 A NATIONAL STOCKTAKING.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 4 September 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1917 A NATIONAL STOCKTAKING.

(With which is Incorporated The Taihape Post and Waimarino News).

The result of the ballot for recruits, published yesterday, has a terrible significance for this Dominion. All but a mere remnant of the healthy and militarily fit young men of this country have gone to fight, to join in the human maelstrom raging on the various battle-fronts in far off lands. We resent the thought that they may never return to us, and yet even that is possible, certain it is that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the brave lads now going will nevr again see either, home country or lowed ones again. We are parting with the best of our manhood for ever, that which this young country can ill afford, or even spare. We are too far from the fighting to enable us to merely fringe our knowledge with the horrors of it; we read without shudder the daily reports of thousands killed, we have become callous to such reports owing to the frequency with which they reach us. They do not even prompt us to take stock of our position, to see the condition our country and people are rapidly approaching. We are on the point of becoming a- nation bereft of all its healthy young men; we shall have none but maimed, diseased and constitutionless young men left, what a prospect for us all to look forward to. We see young men exulting over having been rejected by the medical examiners surely they do not realise what it all means. They do not see that their cases and thousands of others are causing much deep and earnest thought as to the future of the British Empire. A strong nation cannot come from medical rejects, weaklings and diseased. We have cause to mourn the irreparable loss of our healthy young manhood, which has now all but been taken from us. Only a few more, not enough for another ballot, and all will have gone. Have we realised the seriousness of it all? Do we think about what bankruptcy in healthy manhood means to any country and people; what its real mieaning is to this Dominion, and to us all? We go on our daily rounds as if nothing were happening, but suppose for a moment that disaster should

overtake our arms, would we then be brought to a s*ense of our condition? It really does seem doubtful whether we would or would not. We go on sending our healthy youth away and grumbling meanwhile at th*e powers that be because there are not enough, men left to enable us to pursuo our money-get-ting. It seems true that we are troubled more over what we term shortage of labour, that which hampers our money-making processes, far more than we are about our bankruptcy in manhood, that which is essential to the evolution of a strong, healthy empire. This view is supported in the halfhearted way in which the appeal for money to clothe, feed and equip the young men we are sending away has been met in this rich territory. With thriving businesses, high prices for everything we grow, only just over three hundred pounds worth of War Certificates were applied for, not enough in the whole lot to train, equip and put owe of our sons [into the firing line. Seeing that the money must be contributed; that there is no possible chance of side-tracking our responsibilities; that it is a fact that the money will be taken —must be taken — if those who have it will not heed the appeals and warnings that are addressed to them, why is it held back? A skilled workman told us, yesterday, that lue was not putting anything into the War Chest. With four pounds a week he could not pay rent and keep his family as they ought to be kept. The high cost of living rendered it impossible to get what in pre-war days were considered necessaries. He would be content to give half what he earned and exist on the balance, but not while all around comparatively rich mem were making the war an occasion to get still more riches; not while men with land were almost daily buying up more land. Hfe expressed anathemas on a Government that allowed, made it a chief plank of their policy, and even encouraged men to aggregate land; to go on buying the freehold of that they have been content to hold on .some form of deferred payment or occupation with right of purchase, spend their money in this way and expect at the same time to get loaned for war purposes. Only the other day a man told us he had helped the Government in their need for money for War purposes by “making freehold his occupation with right of purchase farm, and this is not an isolated case if report is at all truthful. Government will sooner or later reap the fruits of its but worse still, when the twenty-four millions of money are levied from those whom the Government has helped to it by its insane land jpolicy, then and only thenj will the Government receive the gratitude that injustice and incapacity,invariably merits. It is common knowledge that farm after farm is being added to farms, and that the whole are being mortgaged to find the money, while the aggregator calls out against the tax on what he has mortgaged. While the need for money lasts for war purposes he had no right to mortgage to add to his possessions. We must realise that there is a duty which devolves upon money, which money alone can perform. It is utter nonsense to urge that the mortgagee should take over the responsibility for taxation, because there would soon be no mortgagees; under such conditions no one w r ould be stupid enough to lend money only at such a rate that no farmer could pay. Let us be honest and admit that our land policy is ruinous from every point of view. It enables those with an abnormal land appetite to gorge to the detriment of land anil people generally, and when the time comes, as it now has, for disgorging there is going to be a rumpus of no common character. The policy of the Government tends to a bankruptcy of our young manhood and leads to chaos and trouble and suffering in every other respect. We sincerely hope that the gathering in 'of the twenty-four millions of money required will be accomplished without the necessity of having recourse to more drastic means of levying. We must realise that the Minister of Finance has the 1 misfortune to have to work upon ground that others have prepared for him. The money trouble is ahead and however distasteful we must face it, the only release is finding the money.