Footing the Bill

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 309, 25 May 1945, Page 5

Footing the Bill

T always happens, when a large number of people tell the same story, that discrepancies creep in, and some absurdities. It has happened in all our War Loan campaigns. Some have spoken as if failure to subscribe meant the immediate and unnecessary death of one or more New Zealand soldiers. Others have argued (with the same emphasis and a little more absurdity) that the course of the war is not affected at all whether we give or don’t give. The fact of course is that very few people know what happens when they buy a war bond or authorise the transfer of credit from themselves to the State, and no loan would ever be raised if we had first to be taught these mysteries. After all very few people know what happens when they start a car or turn a radio knob, but they confidently do these things as often as they wish to travel or be entertained. Technical matters must usually be taken on trust by nontechnical ‘people, and the details of national and _ international finance are in that category. But we do not sit in the dark because we do not fully understand how moving a switch can flood a room with light. We risk an act of faith. Most of us know a little more about money than we know about light, but if we knew nothing at all but how to count it our ignerance would not justify a wait-and-see attitude to the war loan. That is not a risk; but an obligation, -and to refuse to contribute because we do not agree with everything said in the course of the campaign is like pleading not guilty to an offence. we ~ have plainly committed because there is a mis-spelling in the indictment. We do not escape that way: we sometimes pay a bigger penalty: and we shall certainly pay in more painful ways if we refuse the opportunity to finance the war by lending instead of by giving. It may not be easy, to follow our pound all the way from our pocket to a parachute or a slit-trench; but it is easy to know what happens if it stays in our pocket. It comes out of the pocket of someone else from whom we steal our, own security. \