The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. WEDNESDAY, DEC. 15, 1920. COMPULSION IN LOAN RAISING.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3653, 15 December 1920, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 15, 1920. COMPULSION IN LOAN RAISING.

With which its incorporated “The Taihape Post and Waimarino News ”

i It does not seem quite creditable to New Zealand moneyed people, something that ttyey could be complimented upon, to allow the Minister of Finance to go on virtually importuning l them to subscribe, between them, six million pounds that are required for Soldier while at the end of last September they had considerably 1 over sixteen millions stacked away on fixed deposit in banks alone. .It people who live by finance desire that the . volume of their trading in money ' should increase, they must invest some of it in laud the most prolific source of money; and they are not likely to find anywhere, a better ... security than the Government of this Dominion has to offer them. 3‘ailiaxnent has enacted that if men with money will not contribute to necessary loans they shall be compelled to do so. In failing to respond to their Government’s urgent call for money they seem to think that extraordinary conditions resulting from the gieat war will right themselves without any special expenditure of money in, amongst other things, putting the tens of thousands of soldiers hack into the economic machinery of the country they were taken from when sent to the war. Every citizen who has a pound of that sixteen millions on fined deposit in banks will'surely realise that the world outside Now Zealand is so poverty stricken that borrowing from any exterrancous source is utterly impossible. Financial conditions in other countries force upon Now Zealanders another stage in insularity; people of this Dominion ere to bo more self-reliant and self contained at ; the present time, as well as in the future, than they have neon in the past. If the country is to bo d.-vol- • oped and the production of money in the shape of primary products is to increase, they have to furnish the lenders of money as well as the borrowefs. The time has arrived when Government cannot look to Britain or to any other country for do velopment loans; for money for ordinary, or for extrordinary public works, be they ever so essential or fraught wth possibilities for great profit. Every citizen of this Britain of the South, whether ho wills it or i not, has to fully understand that selfreliance is forced upon him; he has no choice. If citizens would have urgently needed public works comj menced they, and they roust find the requisite money; if they would do their duty to their country, to their Empire; to the soldiers who have returned from fighting for the freedom of citizenship, they must furnish the money for the purpose, because it is not procurable from any other source. It seems questionable whether moneyed people have grasped the real situation; that New Zealaedis about the most prolific source of riches in. the Empire. When money is required by them* for some great public purpose they wait about as though they expected it from Providence or from some other less dependable and more abstruse source. They have not, apparently, arrived at that stage of understanding which should discover to them the fact that when money is required for some special which could not bo anticipated, there is no place on earth it can come from but from their own accum-

ulutions, be they on fixed deposit in banks or invested, in more land than they can work to secure the utmost profit the land is capable of returning. There is the fact, advertised in every newspaper in the Dominion, ' that the Minister of Finance, to get the loan of a paltry six million at per cent., has got to threaten some moneyed patriots with the compulsory provisions of enacted law. There is a shadow of doubt whether the now position the war has placed people in does not constitue a reasonable excuse for failure to realise the new responsibility, which is, in short, that if New Zealanders would borrow for the good of the community, it is imperative that members of the community who have money should lend it. New Zealand can have no money for works —for Soldier Settlement —but what its people work for; the foreign lender is dead; the c:d pawn-shop in Britain is closed, and when every citizen of this Dominion, rich and ppor, man ana women, fully get the facts into their understanding the Minister of Finance may repeal the compulsory clauses of loan legislation. The period for receiving contributions to the £6,000,000 Soldier

Settlement Loan closes on next ThursI day, the 16th instant; tardy responders to the call for soldier settlement are threatened with,, or pointedly reminded of the compulsory provisions of the Act. It is near Christmas, the time of goodwill to all men, and yet there is a doubt whether the money necessary for putting returned soldiers into profitable employment, men who have been waiting, and hoping, and searching for two years after facing an unprecedented, war-hell in Europe where thousands of their fellows sac- % rificcd their lives, and still lie buried. Have we, as a community forgotten the great sacrifice of manhood, and the awful experiences that most returned men have gone through that New Zealand may remain a free country, a place where Britons may live as Britons would live? This six million loan appeal might be withdrawn to-night if every man and woman did his and her duty to the men who came back from the war, and to the memory of those glorious dead who still sleep in foreign soil. There are few men and 'women in every part of the Dominion who cannot do something towards contributing the money wanted for soldier settlement before Christmas, and we believe that not a man or woman in this district of Tai•ha'pe who reads this humble appeal, and has an available fifteen shillings will fail to go to the Post Office and take up at least one certificate which in a very few years will return them twenty shillings. Soldier Settlement is, however, a national work, a national duty, which neither rich nor moderately comfortable people can conscientiously shirk. But above all let it be thoroughly understood that whatever money is required for ordinary administration purposes and for such special work as Soldier Settlement New Zealanders from now on must provide it themselves, simply because there is no other source from which it can be borrowed.