I move—

I shall not take up the time of the House long. This Bill has had an astonishingly good passage through this House. One can congratulate the House on the splendid spirit of co-operation which it has exhibited in connection with this Bill, the preparedness to exclude all party considerations, and the willingness of every hon. member to do everything in his power to assist the Minister to put a Bill on to the statute book which is really effective and up to date. I am sorry that I cannot pay the same compliment to the Minister and his department. The way in which they have handled the Bill was liable to wreck one of our best pieces of legislation. This Bill is a consolidating measure. The department has been getting the Bill ready for years, and it was before a Select Committee last year. We devoted a whole session to it to try to make it as good as possible, and yet we find that the Minister is still constantly tinkering at it, as if the Bill had come before him for the first time. Yesterday the Minister made use of the report stage by way of unopposed motions to make additional amendments in the Bill. Yesterday I really got the idea that the Minister and his department had now for the first time got an appreciation of the force of every word and every sentence in the Bill. The Minister did not deserve that this Bill should have enjoyed such an easy passage through the House. Before the Bill is put on to the statute book there are three things that I would like to bring to the notice of the Minister. The first is that this Bill gives the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry extraordinary powers to prevent forest fires in future. I think that we all take up the attitude that the forests that we own are a great national asset, which should be protected. We have often been grieved to see that valuable forests on the slopes of Table Mountain were being destroyed by fire. Now we are giving the Minister extraordinary powers, and the public will expect the Minister, in future, to do everything in his power to prevent such forest fires being repeated. But one point which did not come very clearly to light in the debate is in connection with clauses 12 and 14. The Department of Forestry there for the first time, gets the right to exercise control over the trading in timber and furniture. In this Bill an attempt is being made for the first time to protect the public against the furniture makers who sell furniture which has been manufactured out of timber which has not been properly dried. We have heard complaints in connection with this, and the Minister is now getting the power to protect the public against it, and we expect the Minister to protect the public under those powers which he is being given. But more important still is this. We are now getting the opportunity for the first time to protect our own species of timber against imported kinds of timber. I think it is only a year or so ago that I brought to the notice of this hon. House that a certain Brazilian wood was being imported, that it was being sold in South Africa as Stinkhout, and that fraud was being committed in that way. Now the Minister is getting an opportunity of protecting the public against that as well. It is a very important thing. Stinkhout is in a special degree a thing which is unique in South Africa. It is our own national timber. It is peculiar to South Africa, just as champagne is to France. France does everything in her power to protect champagne, and I hope the Minister will also go out of his way to prevent any imported classes of timber being sold again in future under the name of Stinkhout. Under this clause the Minister will know when people are importing timber, and I say that a furniture maker who imports Brazilian timber ought not to be given the right to sell Stinkhout as well. We know that it is practically impossible to distinguish these two kinds of timber from each other. I know of a case where a piece of Brazilian wood and a piece of pure Stinkhout was submitted to one of the head officials of the Forestry Department, and they were asked to say which was Stinkhout and which was Brazilian wood. They were unable to do so— so similar did they appear, and therefore I ask that the people who are importing Brazilian wood to manufacture furniture should not be allowed to sell Stinkhout. The Minister knows which furniture makers are importing Brazilian wood, and we must not allow them to sell Stinkhout in their factories as well In the third place, the Minister is obtaining the power under this Bill of protecting trees. I hope that the Minister will pay attention to what the hon. member for Mowbray (Capt. Hare) said here The worst sinners in connection with the destruction of old trees are the municipalities. I want to draw the Minister’s attention to what is happening in George. There we have trees which are 100 years old; they are ornamental trees, and it is heartbreaking to see in what a vandalistic spirit the municipality is acting in cutting down and destroying those magnificent old oaks. I would like the Minister, in the future, when matters of this kind are brought to his notice, not to shrug his shoulders. He has the power to prevent it. My experience is that the people who have never yet planted a tree are the people who are first ready to lay an axe to a tree, but people who have planted trees know how to appreciate trees. The Minister must take care that the splendid old oaks which date from the time of Simon van der Stel are preserved. They do not belong to our generation but to posterity as well. The Minister is obtaining extended powers under the Bill to protect our trees, our forests and our species of timber under the law, and we expect it of the Minister and his department to make effective use of those powers in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I would earnestly appeal to the Minister to reconsider the first proviso to clause 31, during the time the Bill is in cold storage, after leaving this House and going to the other place. As it stands the proviso constitutes a most unwarrantable interference with the prerogative of the Postmaster-General. I suggest that instead of inserting a proviso of this kind the Minister should consider the introduction of a short Bill during this session to amend the principal Act, that is the Post Office Act of 1911. If he reconsiders the matter I trust that he will move an amendment to the clause when an opportunity occurs.

I think the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. Neate) is really unduly alarmed. I do not think it is necessary to introduce another Bill. I have again consulted the Railway Department and the Post Office Department, and I can assure him that they are quite satisfied, and if they were not satisfied they would have let me know. And if they are satisfied I do not think the hon. member need worry about it. I accept the gentle reproof by my hon. friend from George (Mr. Werth), but I hope he will allow me to say this with all due respect. If he had assisted us a little more in Select Committee, we might have made a better Bill. I do not want to tell tales out of school, but he knows what I mean. May I suggest this to him: instead of blaming me for coming here with new amendments, perhaps I deserve a little credit for what my Department did. Take yesterday’s amendment which he speaks about. This was brought to me yesterday morning. Of course. I could have refused this community and have said “No, there was a Select Committee, and I am not going to introduce an amendment.” I could have taken the Bill to the Other Place first, and then have come back and worried the House again with this Bill. It seemed to me that that was not the better way of doing it. One of their amendments brought in was brought in at the request of the hon. member for Pretoria District (Mr. Oost). I again could have said “You bring in your amendment, and probably have it turned down,” but it seemed a reasonable amendment, and I thought where the Bill was improved it was just as well to bring it while there was still time to do so. I am afraid I do not feel so very guilty over those strictures which the hon. member has passed on me. He told me what is expected from my Department and from myself. Well, we know our duty. I will not say that I know my job—only that is my business—I am a forester of sorts.

Yes, what sort?

But my Department knows its job, and I assure him we can carry it out. He need have no fear that we shall ever be too strict where we should not be, or too gentle where we should be strict.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

The speech by the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth) yesterday was somewhat of a change from the kind of speech which we have been accustomed to during the last week or so from that side of the House. There was a very pleasant absence of personalities, and there was an attempt in that speech to put forward criticism of certain aspects of our social problems, and although the proposals in the hon. member’s amendment were nebulous, there was, one could see, a desire on that side of the House to consider some of the problems with which the country is faced in a manner which perhaps is a very hopeful sign that they are beginning to realise that the Opposition which we are accustomed to is not going down in the country, and is not helpful —is not useful. I must confess that I was astounded to hear the hon. member’s criticism of the Minister of Finance in introducing this measure before the Estimates of Expenditure had been laid on the table of the House. He said that that had been the rule, I think, for some 20 or 30 years, but that it had not been followed out during the last six or seven years. Might I perhaps suggest one reason why it was not followed out for the last six or seven years? Before that time we had an Opposition which could debate and criticise, but in the last six or seven years we did not have one, and might I also point out why it is difficult to blame the Minister for not laying the Estimates on the table? When he did so a few weeks ago, when he gave the House the opportunity to debate specially the increased war expenditure, when the Opposition were given the opportunity on the floor of the House of making good the statements which they had been making in the country about the grave waste of money and the scandals which they had been whispering about—when the vote came up it passed through without a single word of criticism, and it was only by the veriest fluke that the Whip got up and challenged a division. Can one wonder when the Minister says, or asks, what is the necessity of putting up Estimates of Expenditure when they will not even discuss them?

Very poor.

There has been a tendency to refer to other debates on previous occasions. I want to draw the hon. member’s attention to the rule which prohibits reference to previous debates.

I am explaining why the Minister was justified in not laying on the table the Estimates of Expenditure in view of the fact that when they were laid on the table no interest was taken in them by the other side of the House. But may I say—I was not referring to the debate, but to the absence of debate. Now I want to deal particularly with the amendments which have been proposed by the hon. member because the debate last evening developed into a criticism of the social programme which this Government was carrying out.

They have not got one.

There was an attempt made by the hon. member for George to put forward criticisms of certain aspects of our social legislation. The hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman) tried to debate with the Minister for Labour certain aspects of our labour legislation, but I think everyone will agree that he lamentably failed to impress the House with the criticism he attempted to make. I want to devote my attention to the remarks of the hon. member for George. First of all, let us take the first item of the amendment, that we must cease all expenditure on defence which is not strictly in accordance with the provisions of the Defence Act. That, of course, going back on the whole question of our entry into the war. Well, I am not going back on that question. The House has settled that on several occasions. But what I want to ask the hon. member is this—does he want to go back to the ore-war condition of unarmed, unpreparedness, to the scandalous condition which prevailed then? Does not the hon. member know that every penny spent on defence has to be incorporated in a Bill, and that the Defence Act itself does not make any provision for the spending of money, that it is this House in the Appropriation Bill which decides what money shall be spent, and does he not realise that this House has definitely decided what that amount shall be? Now, I can quite understand that the hon. member does not agree with that. Well, on that there is no question. We are as divided on that as the poles, and we shall continue to be. But there is one thing we can say. We on this side of the House are determined to see to it that whatever expenditure is required to carry this war through to complete our part in it, will be voted.

We know that.

That is our point of view, you have another point of view, and on that we shall never meet. Now I want to deal with the hon. member’s second point, his criticism of our social programmee. During the last few months we have noticed an increasing tendency among hon. members opposite to make statements about the deplorable condition of the people of South Africa, how this Government has departed from the social principles which were laid down over so many years, and that the social conditions of the people to-day are worse than they have ever been. The hon. member for Potgietersrust (the Rev. S. W. Naudé) went so far at the congress of that party at Pretoria—where, by the way, there was no resolution allowed to be put which was at all controversial—as to make the statement that the Union is today worse off in regard to the poor white position that it has ever been, that there are about 400,000 poor whites in the country, and so on.

That is so.

I hope to submit more authoritative evidence to show that that side of the House likes to make statements without producing the slightest proof in support of their contentions. I shall deal with that more fully later. But there was another gentleman on that side of the House, and I am sorry he is not there to-day, that is the hon. member for Gezina (Mr. Pirow), who has been talking very much recently about the deplorable state of the poor white. He said that if we spent £100,000,000 on the war they were going to spend £200,000,000 to solve the poor white problem.

What have they done so far?

I want to remind the House of a speech made by the hon. member for Gezina a little over two years ago when he said that his concern over the poor white question was not a matter which troubled him very much. As far as he was concerned the poor white position had been practically settled. He was speaking in Durban just before the general election. He has had many new orders since that time. He was discussing this poor white question then, and he pointed out that as far as that position was concerned that was not the main worry of the Government. This is what he said—

That was the United Party, but you are the conglomerate party.

Yes, I am not going to answer the hon. member’s interruption just now …

Now I just want to point to that, because a year or two ago these gentlemen were not concerned with this problem of the poor white. I want to deal with the question a little further and to controvert that statement of the hon. member, that there are 400,000 poor whites—for which there is not one tittle of proof—they cannot produce a shadow of proof. I am going to quote from a speech made in November by the Secretary for Social Welfare, Mr. Kuschke, who spoke at a meeting of Dutch Reformed ministers in Johannesburg, where he made a statement— he was contesting the statement that there had been an increase in the number of poor whites, and he submitted that all the evidence went to show that, taking into consideration the circumstances which had elapsed since the Carnegie Commission report in 1932, there had been a very definite decrease in the number of poor whites. This is what he said, and the reasons which he gave, which I want to give to the House because it seems to me that it is just about time that some of these facts were placed before the country to controvert some of these wild statements on this question. Now, the Carnegie Commission said that there were four causes which contributed to the segregation of poor whites. The first was insufficient opportunities for employment, the second insufficient educational opportunities, the third, isolation, and the fourth, insufficient health services. Now, one of the charges made by the Opposition in their amendment is on this question of employment where they say that the Government take no steps at all to deal with the problem of unemployment which they maintain is very serious. There again no facts were given and no evidence produced.

Facts were given.

From 1932 when this report was issued the European population increased by 14%. The number of factories between 1932 and 1938 increased by 2,555, and the number of Europeans increasingly employed in the factories from 1932 to 1938 was over 56,000. That is the increase in the number employed. The Railways gave employment to an additional 10,000. The gold mines increased their employment by 20,000. So that during those last eight or nine years the opportunities for employment in those sections for which statistics are kept have been from 10% to 20% increase which is definitely greatly in excess of the normal increase of population, and has therefore helped to solve the unemployment problem which has been one of the causes of poor whiteism. But the general index of employment figures are very clear, too. And they show that whereas on the base year 1925 index 1,000, the index figure was 1,148 in 1931 in November of last year it had gone up to 1,782, showing that throughout the country there has been ‘ a very definite increase in the opportunities for employment, and as a matter of fact to-day the country wants people who are competent, and it has been said that no man at all need be out of work.

That is untrue.

Now hon. members cannot question these figures. If you take the opportunities that are given by the increasing number of factories which were started during the last year or so, and of the increased facilities for training youths under the schemes of the Government, and the great increase in numbers of Government technical institutes, it will be seen that South Africa during the last years has offered greater facilities and has given the lads in this country greater opportunities than ever existed before for employment.

How do you account for the 6,000 families receiving charitable benefits?

Out of a total population of 2,250,000? I say this, that that was the position at Christmas time. At Christmas time certain people do receive certain benefits due perhaps to illness or loss of the breadwinner, but that does not go to prove that there has been an increase in unemployment. Take the actual unemployment figures. The registered figures in 1932 were over 14,000.

Surely you do not take those figures?

These figures must be indicative of the position even if they are not entirely accurate. The hon. member when he was sitting on this side of the House was quite willing to take these figures as being indicative of the position. The position is that in 1932 there used to be an average of 14,000 registrations, and in 1939 the number was down to just over 4,000. It shows that all the time facilities have been given for increased employment, and that in fact the position in regard to unemployment has improved throughout the country. On the educational side the facilities given in technical colleges since 1932 have increased, and the enrolment is over 11,000.

Why not compare prewar with post-war?

I am taking 1932 because that was the year upon which the Carnegie Commission based their figures. It was the height of the depression and that put up the numbers of the poor whites, and if hon. members are going to tell the country that the figures were 300,000 then and that they are 400,000 now, then what becomes of the hon. member’s argument? What we object to is that members of this House are going through the country trying to exploit the poor white position as being something for which the Government is responsible.

The poor whites would never trust you.

I do not intend following the hon. member—his remarks just show his state of mind. But I do protest most strongly when a man like the hon. member for Potgietersrust makes statements at party congresses that the number of these people have increased by 100,000 and then starts blaming the Government for the policy it is pursuing. It is time, I say, that they should get down to facts. We are pursuing to-day a social policy which has the United Party policy, and that has been developed to-day, and now they are trying to criticise it. They cannot find a genuine case for criticism, they do not know of a single instance where the policy of the old Government has been departed from in this respect, and they know that we are carrying out that policy. I can go right through the list to show how the position of the poor whites has been improved in the way of increased medical services, more hospitals, more educational facilities, and increased opportunities for earning wages.

Increased wages?

Yes, wages have gone up, and, what is more, there are increased opportunities for everyone of these people to improve their position in industry. I will quote from this report in support of this contention—

On that particular matter there will no doubt be very many differences of opinion. Hon. members opposite have charged the Government with reducing old age pensions, and one hon. member said they had been reduced by 10s. a month, and in one case £1 a month, and he supposed that was a contribution to the war. I challenge the hon. member for George to ascertain the true reason for the reduction in pension, and lay the papers on the Table of the House. Then we have had complaints from that side of the House as to how little the Government is doing on behalf of the farmers. Who is responsible for the lack of support the farmers are alleged to be suffering from? Let me tell the House of some difficulties which we have met with in meeting the requirements of the Defence Force. We were asked to try and get our supplies direct from the farmers, and arrange for contracts for five or six months, and some of the farmers said they were not going to enter into any contracts to supply the Defence Department.

Where was this?

Not far from your part of the world. Some of the farmers said they were not going to supply the Department, but when they found that others were doing so they came round and wanted to join in. When they were asked why they had not wanted to supply, they said they were told not to. Since I have been on my particular job, I have seen a great deal of the inside working of supplies, and I want to say that the country has every reason to be grateful and thankful to the people in the matter of giving us what we want for the army. Here and there we have found difficulty, but as a whole we have had that support which is extremely gratifying to the Government, which, as everyone knows, has been working under very great difficulties. We are told, furthermore, that this Government has not helped the farmers, so let me say this—

Order! The hon. member should not anticipate a motion which is on the Paper. I am just warning him.

Is that the relief to farmers, sir?

Yes.

On this particular matter I am referring to the statement of the hon. member for George that in order to help farmers the Government should create more key industries, especially canned meat. A full investigation has been made into that question, and the matter is under consideration. On the question of the canning industry, I want to say that practically every one of the factories, including a new cooperative factory which has just been started out Worcester way, every one of those factories are working to full capacity to supply not only this country, but overseas. Every single opportunity has been given to the farmers of this country to supply fruit, vegetables and meat, and from the Forestry Department, for supplies of wood for woodcasing. If the hon. member can suggest any further industry of permanent value to this country that can be established here, no doubt the matter will be fully investigated.

When were the farmers approached to supply meat?

As regards this question of supplying meat to all the camps throughout the country, we advertised our wants right through the country and called for tenders, and these were turned over to the Agricultural Department for their recommendation. So far from this Government having been unmindful of the interests of the farmers, or of the poorer sections of the people, or any other section, no Government has ever been more careful of their interests, no Government has done more to promote the interests of every section, or more careful in ensuring that war expenditure is not wasteful, than this Government has been. Control is exercised on every side, and if hon. members opposite would assist us and not be so ready to gibe and sneer at hon. members on this side of the House, who after all are doing their duty, we should get on much better. On this particular job connected with defence, we do want the support of every section of the country, and I am glad to say we are getting the support of the vast majority of our people.

The hon. member who has just sat down tried to use that old hackneyed argument that the expenses which the Government were now incurring in defending the country were for self-defence. I want to tell him very emphatically that this side of the House does not believe that nonsense and I doubt whether his friends around him believe it, and also whether the country believes it. It is also a question whether he himself believes that those millions are being spent for the defence of the country. The most ignorant person in the country knows this, and understands that these millions of pounds are being spent for nothing else than to see the war of England through. Then he took up nearly the whole of his time in explaining to the House what a splendid programme they had drawn up to solve the poor white question and to prevent unemployment. A very nice programme! Theoretically it sounds magnificent, but that programme will serve for nothing else than a fig leaf behind which they want to hide. A nice fig leaf to hide behind, as they have always tried to hide behind a nice programme, but when it is a question of practice and the programme has to be carried out, then they know nothing about it, and we are left with a hungry country and a hungry people, and millions of pounds are spent to assist England in her war. In passing, I want to remind the House that a few days ago there was a tremendous protest here, and a motion of no confidence was debated, and I dare to say that it was not only a protest by this side of the House, but that it was a protest which came from the whole of the country. It was not only a protest but an outburst, an outburst against the reckless waste of money which is now going on to the deep indignation of Afrikanerdom. All limits have been exceeded by this excessive lawless waste of money, and if I may use a stronger word— this shameless waste of money. Although we are living in a hungry country, all the money of the country is being spent in a most reckless way in assisting England to win the war. But we can understand that that side of the House yields to the whip and the sjambok of Downing Street. They crouch under the sjamboks of John Bull— the slave drivers of jingoism—who sjambok the creatures of Great Britain in South Africa, to spend every life and every shilling and every penny of the country if it is necessary, in the service of Great Britain.

Is that why America is coming in?

I would like to remind the hon. member that Great Britain is to-day standing with her hat in her hand at the back door of America, begging and praying. Is that the same Great Britain that he talks about? I make bold to say that when I have reached the length that must go and beg at the back door of my neighbour, then I am a big nonentity. England, on the one hand, talks about going to win the war, and then she stands and begs the United States at her back door to assist her with munitions and with war material. John Bull is too cowardly to stand to his guns on his own initiative. He beats, on the one hand, with the horsewhip, but on the other hand he crawls to the United States and begs for help. We pity him, but in South Africa no obligations are due to Great Britain. South Africa owes England nothing, we are not indebted to England in anything, and we refuse to undertake any obligations. If any obligation is due then it is an obligation on the part of England. England owes South Africa those millions of the World War. We are not satisfied with the old guns and the old material that we received for our millions. And more particularly, there is still a debit in the books of South Africa against England which will probably never be forgotteen—the injustice of the Three Years war.

What do you know about it?

I took part in it. I bled in that war. I know what was going on there, and when I came back I found dynamite under my parental home, which was blown up. Everything had been burnt, and stock and kraals were destroyed.

Hitler doubtless was there.

I will tell you who was there. Someone much worse than a Hitler. It was Lord Kitchener, your man. He was worse than Hitler, and behind him there was standing Joseph Chamberlain, Milner, Churchill and men like that. Behind him there also stood Jameson and Rhodes. I say there is a bad debt, and it is a debt which cannot be paid with money, it is a blood debt of 260,000 women and children, a blood debt which will exist for ever as a blot on Great Britain.

The Minister of Native Affairs also knows it, or has he forgotten it by now?

I want to go further and say here emphatically that South Africa no longer has a Treasury. The Treasury of South Africa belongs to England, and has been commandeered by England. We have no say in the matter. Apparently the Government sits there with that apparent power, but it was agreed, in writing, long before the World War, that they would place the Treasury at the service of Great Britain, as soon as she entered the war, and all they are doing now is to give effect to that obligation which they entered into without the knowledge of South Africa. England arbitrarily controls our Treasury, as she finds it necessary. I say that South Africa no longer has any Treasury. The revenue belongs to England. All our assets belong to her. South Africa has to see to banking the deposits, but she has no bank book. England has a blank cheque to do with the public money of South Africa whatever she may please or desire. I have not yet heard any objections on the part of the Minister of Finance, and consequently I take it that he agrees with me. All the national developments in South Africa have come to a standstill. Everything has been stopped, and nothing is being done for the country. Unemployment is increasing. As I have already said, we are living in a hungry country with a hungry people, and onthing is being done to take counter-measures in order to hold out a helping hand to save the interests and needs of our own country. Everything, every pound and every shilling, is being spent on the “see the war through” policy, and nothing is being done to assist the country in its need. Everything is in a rusty state in our own country, but the sword of war is shining. The war machinery has been oiled and greased, and is smooth. Everything is working freely and easily, and the point is already gliding into Abyssinia. Even the uniforms sparkle in that country, but here in our country everything is rusted. I want heartily to agree with and confirm what the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth) said here yesterday. The hon. member for George made this special statement to the effect that there was a conspiracy against everything that was Afrikaans, against all the interests of the farmers and against the farming industry, in view of the numbers of poor whites and of unemployment. If he ever spoke the truth, then it was the statement he made yesterday that there is a conspiracy against Afrikanerdom. Not only are our money and all the revenue of the State used to see the war through, but, in addition, our sons and daughters are being slaughtered for Great Britain. Every drop of our people’s blood is being spilled for the sake of British imperialism. The last shilling, yes, the last pound. The young men are not only slaughtered, but the very fat on the entrails of South Africa is taken off to be given to the wars of England. When the war is over, and suppose England has won, then I see the same state of affairs that we had after the World War. Then it will be England and England alone. Then she will no longer speak of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, or President Wilson. Then it is only “Rule Britannia.” She alone! If England should win the war—I do not know what hope she has—but I just want to say that then it will not be President Roosevelt, or it will not be the jingo party in South Africa, but England alone, and no one else but England. Then South Africa will be exhausted, and be a hungry country, and South Africa can begin to struggle afresh, in order to get ready and to make preparations, what for? For the next war of Great Britain. Hardly had South Africa got on its feet and recovered after the World War, when we had the second war. Really, as soon as this war is over, South Africa will doubtless again have to get ready for England’s next war, just as it had to get ready for these two wars. Just as South Africa has bled in these two wars, she will also have to bleed in future for England’s wars—every life, every shilling and every pound. I say it is in vain for this side to protest. The thunders of war have deafened them; the flame of war has hardened and scorched the conscience of the so-called British imperialistic agent. Without any conscience for their own country and their own people, they are sacrificing South Africa in the service of “Home.” Heaven grant that that “Home” may some day break up and come to an end, because it is a pernicious “Home,” and that there will no longer be any necessity for that “Home” to be protected, but that in South Africa a feeling of patriotism will really arise; notwithstanding all the protests, she is being treated with defiance and derision. Force is right; violence does what it wills. I may say this, that the Opposition know what they want, and they are keeping on their course, notwithstanding all those insults and violence. The Opposition is going to protest, and they are going to use the lever of their nationalism with all violence. They are going to beat against the iron legs of imperialism until they shake, and until imperialism in this country falls into ruins. Nationalism has never yet failed. Nationalism, according to history, has always conquered over imperialism. Whatever attempts may be made to suppress nationalism, the latter will eventually conquer, and Great Britain and its so-called handymen on the other side, will never succeed in destroying nationalism in this country. She cannot and she shall not. It is impossible, it is not in accordance with past history—nationalism must conquer, and shall conquer. I want to remind hon. members opposite of General Titus, the handsome, of the Roman Empire; when he obtained a victory he came back with the kings, princes and generals which he had captured. He chained them to the war chariot in which he drove through the streets of Rome, and sat in front of the chariot with his laurel wreaths, and thousands and thousands cheered him. After the parade of honour through the town, it was customary that he should himself kill the enemies with his own sword. While he was so driving and getting all the honour and glory, one of his prisoners kept on saying: “General, do you notice that the side of the wheel which is now on top will presently be below us?” Titus remained silent. “General, the side of the wheel which is now on top will be underneath in a moment.” And for the third time, “General, the side of the wheel which is now on top will be underneath presently.” It saved their lives, they were pardoned. Titus was wise enough to see that, and to spare their lives. I want to tell hon. members opposite, and also the Prime Minister, even if he is not in his place, that they must remember that the side which is now on top will later on be below. Go on making use of force, of your majority, go on insulting, devastating and smashing, go on breaking down, but I say: “The side of the wheel which is now on top will presently be underneath.” As certain as the sun shines in the heavens—I say this with the greatest emphasis—the day will come when this side will be on top and that side will be underneath, and I say that it will be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We will treat the other side as those on the other side have treated us, we will measure with the same measure that has been used towards us. And then they must not shed crocodile tears.

Are you going to make war?

We will do to the other side just what they are doing to us. Therefore I want finally and emphatically, and with the deepest convictions of my soul, to issue this warning to them: Be careful, we have to live together in this country, we cannot live with England, nor with Germany, we must live together and work together here, and we must make this country a happy country for our posterity. Be careful how you act, and treat this side and Afrikanerdom as you want to be treated, and not in the way in which you are treating us to-day. To-day we are not shown the least consideration; no sympathy is given to the Afrikaners, but we are wounded and destroyed, and our souls are being dragged out of our bodies with this “see the war through” policy. I hope that the other side of the House will accept this well-meant warning, because we will settle accounts to-morrow.

I do not propose answering the peculiar ramble which I have just listened to from the member for Namaqualand (Mr. Booysen). I do not propose devoting much time to it, but there were a couple of points which rather struck me One was at the end, when the hon. member threatened us from the other side of the House and said that the day would come when they would be at the top and we at the bottom, and it would be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and they would treat us as we had treated them. All I can say is that I think we have treated them very lightly indeed. In fact some of us on this side of the House feel that the time has come when we should take off the kid gloves and deal with them as they should be dealt with. And I want to tell members on that side of the House that if they are going to treat us as we have treated them, I want to warn them that if ever we should be on the Opposition benches we shall treat them as they have treated us. There is a grave lack of courtesy shown by members on the other side of the House to Ministers when they are addressing the House, and particularly is that the case when the Leader of our party, the Prime Minister, is speaking—the interjections that come from that side are, to say the least of it, deplorable.

Do you expect anything else?

The hon. gentleman who has interjected is one of the worst offenders. I want to compare the treatment which the Prime Minister gets from the other side with the treatment their Leader gets from us when he is speaking. When he is speaking there is very little interjection from this side, although we would all love to be able to interject to the extent to which hon. members over there do. But there is just that bit of courtesy shown on this side which is jacking on the other side.

What has all that got to do with the motion?

The hon. member for Namaqualand (Lt.-Col Booysen) also said that we on this side were in the war to help England, and that when the war was over South Africa would be forgotten and would not be credited with having helped to win the war. We on this side of the House are very proud to be associated with that Commonwealth called the British Commonwealth of Nations. Whenever a reference comes from this side of the House as to the British Commonwealth of Nations, it is always sneered at by the other side, but we are very proud to belong to that Commonwealth of Nations. When the Opposition talk about the war they talk about the imperial war, and they tell us that we are just fighting England’s war. We just want to remind hon. members there that we in South Africa are very proud of the fact that we are taking our full share in the war as one of the members of the Commonwealth of Nations, just the same as the other members of the Commonwealth are taking their share. We feel that if any member of the British Commonwealth of Nations is in danger we want to help them just as we would expect another member of the Commonwealth to help us if we were in danger. We would expect them to come to our assistance also should the necessity arise. And hon. members on the opposite side of the House would have been the first to claim that the other members of the Commonwealth should come in to assist South Africa is she were attacked. I am afraid I am devoting too much time to the hon. member, and I think I had better go on to say what I have to say.

Have you anything weighty on your brain?

Well, the hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer) has not got too much on the top of his brain, although I see he has parted his few hairs to-day. I want to offer my congratulations to the whole of the population of South Africa— with a few exceptions—and the few exceptions are on that side of the House—for the fine patriotic spirit they have shown since September, 1939. When we declared war both sections, male and female, came forward in their thousands and offered their services to rhe Government to help us in our war effort. We are very proud of what the public of South Africa have done, and although we have some “hands-uppers” on the opposite side who, I always feel, are just hiding behind this republican cloak—to my mind it is only an excuse to them to be able to say “We cannot agree with your policy— we want a republic—that is why we are not prepared to fight”… it is just another way of being a “hands-upper,” a “conscientious objector,” a “won’t fight.” It strikes me that if by any chance there were a possibility of hon. members opposite getting their republic, whether they would be prepared to fight for it. I often wonder. I am afraid that a small section of South Africa whom they are misleading would have to do all the fighting, and the hon. members opposite would be conspicuous by their absence. They would be leading from behind.

Where are you fighting to-day.?

The hon. member for Potgietersrust is interrupting. I am surprised at his doing so. He has never done any fighting in his life. I believe he asked me if I was doing any fighting. I have served my country whenever she has needed me. I want to offer my congratulations to the hon. member for Potgietersrust. I believe that after September, after we had declared war, the hon. member offered his services to fight for us!

To defend our country.

Oh, I see. But he is not now associating himself with our war effort. I believe he put a proviso at the end of that offer of his. He did not come forward to defend this country. Did the hon. member not want to be chaplain in chief of the South African forces?

That is a lie.

The hon. member says I am lying. Tut, tut! Is that the kind of language that should be used in this House?

Oh, let him go.

Yes, I think I will let the hon. member go. But, still, I challenge him to disprove what I have said. It is perfectly correct, and he cannot deny it.

Where is your proof?

Proof—well, I cannot give it in black and white, but I have a lot of proof. I can bring any number of people who can substantiate what I have said. And, furthermore, I want to say this, and I know what I am saying, that the hon. member was prepared to come over to this side of the House if he got the job. Is that not so?

You know it is not true.

Well, anyhow, you got a job.

But just let me tell the hon. member that we have not got any vacant seats on this side to accommodate him. Having said that, I want to offer some constructive criticism to the Minister of Defence, and I am sorry he is not in his seat. But I am sure the Minister of Finance will pass it on. Ever since war has been declared, unlike my interjecting friend, I have been trying to do my best for my country, and I am fortunately placed in a position in the army where I can see certain improvements which to my mind can be effected. I offer the suggestions simply from the point of view of increasing the efficiency of the army, and of rendering whatever assistance I can in that direction. As we all know, this war is different from any other war the world has ever seen.

Is it? Where do you get that from?

I do not think the hon. member knows one war from another. This war is purely and simply a mechanical war. Because of this, mechanical men, men with mechanical knowledge, artisans and engineers, are in great demand, and thousands of them have offered their services. Unfortunately, large numbers of them cannot be spared and have to remain at home. But those who have been able to go have offered their services. And of those who have offered to go on active service, quite a number are not young men. They have to be subjected to a medical examination, the same as any other soldier who decides to join up. One of the first questions that these men have to answer on attestation is: “What is your age?” Now among the best mechanics to-day are men of over fifty years of age, and when these men tell the medical officer that they are fifty or more, they are promptly put into a medical “C” category. Perhaps I had better explain that—I know hon. members opposite are very interested.

Not a bit of it.

The “A” medical category consists of men who can serve anywhere in Africa, and who can also serve in the fighting line. The medical “B” are men who can serve anywhere in Africa, but who cannot go into the fighting line, and the medical “C” men can only serve within the borders of the Union. Now, to get back to my point, these mechanics who offer themselves, when they say that they are between fifty and fifty-five years of age, or even up to sixty, they are immediately placed in the “C” category. That does not allow those men to be sent anywhere in Africa, and you will find that the tradesman who has been at his trade for thirty-five years gets very annoyed when he goes in front of the medical officer to sign up as an artisan, as a fitter or a turner or an engineer, as he is going to do that job in the army, and is told that he is not allowed to leave the Union. If that man can serve in the Union, to work at his trade in the Union, there does not seem to be any reason why they should not be allowed to go to Northern or Central Africa and do the work of their trade there.

Can that man stand the tropical climate?

Certainly he can. I am surprised at the hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Blackwell) talking like that. He knows Central Africa, and he knows that the climate there is very similar to what it is here. But, of course, on the Equator and at the coast it is very hot. Nevertheless, these men are going to work at their trade, they are not going to work in the sun, they are always under shelter. To my mind, these men should, before they go to the medical officer, come before a classification officer. And that classification officer would enquire what their calling in life is. If the man says that he is a tradesman, the classification officer would go into that, he would be properly trade tested, and the classification officer would then allocate him into an engineering unit or a workshop unit. From the classification officer, then man should then go to the medical officer for examination, and the medical officer should examine him with a view to his fitness for the unit to which he is designated by the classification officer. We would find that if that were done thousands of men who to-day are not allowed to leave the country, and do their duty anywhere in Africa, would be released.

Another few million pounds.

Another point is with regard to our medical officers. I am very proud of what our medical officers are doing, they are doing a very good job of work, and as a body they are a very fine lot.

Do you belong to them?

To my mind a large number of young medical officers have been appointed who do not understand the psychology of the men. The best soldier ever produced in the world was a potential lead-swinger.

Are you a good soldier?

That soldier, if he could by reporting sick get out of a fatigue would do so. That is where I feel that these very young medical officers, if they were given a short military course—if they were trained as infantrymen, even if only for three months—would not only learn to understand the psychology of a soldier, but it would also do them a lot of good.

It would not do you any harm.

It would make it much easier for those of us who are handling men to-day, to train them.

Have you got a military position?

Yes, he is a captain.

As regards the national war work going on in our factories and industries, large numbers, thousands of men and women in the country to-day, are debarred from joining the forces because they are doing national war work. Their factories might be turning out military equipment, or their engineering shops might be turning out armaments and munitions. I think the time has come when we should put all these men and women into uniform, and I think they should come under military control.

What about members of Parliament?

It would really give me great satisfaction to see the hon. member for Mossel Bay (Dr. Van Nierop) in uniform, but, unfortunately, judging from the speech he delivered yesterday, I think the only uniform he is ever likely to wear—if he is allowed to—will be a German uniform.

What uniform are you wearing?

Yes, the hon. member who has just interjected made a speech yesterday about soldiers in railway coaches. Unfortunately, the speaker who followed him did not stress the point sufficiently. The hon. member suggested to the Minister of Railways that a special coach should be put at the back of the train and that he should put the soldiers into that coach. Also a goods truck or a guard’s van should be put next to it, so that the soldiers should be segregated from the remainder of the passengers on the train.

You did not hear what I said.

The speaker who followed him said: “Fie on you!” and he told him that a large percentage of our soldiers to-day are Afrikaners, of whom we are proud. But the hon. member thinks he is better than they are. The hon. member should be very proud of those who are going round in uniform to-day, they are prepared to do what he is not prepared to do. He is prepared to sell his country, whereas they are prepared to defend it—they are prepared to defend it for him, and to defend democracy for him.

Democracy—a mockery!

The hon. member even went further, and said he would deny any soldier the right to have a drink on the train. I am surprised. I wonder if the hon. member has the courage of his convictions, and if he would dare go among a few soldiers and tell them this.

I have done so.

I would tell the hon. member that there are thousands of men who will fight for their country while he is sitting here and making interjections and doing nothing.

Is that why you are not in uniform?

That is why I am in uniform. I wish you would come along so that we might try to make soldiers of you. To-day in the army we can make decent soldiers out of people in six months, but I do not know how long it will take to make a soldier out of the hon. gentleman over there. I was dealing with factories when I was interrupted. I feel that if people who are serving in factories cannot get away to the front, there often is a slur cast at them. People look at them askance and say “Why are you not in uniform?” and all the time these people are not allowed to go. We can overcome the difficulty by putting all these factories under miltiary control, and by putting all the workers into uniform. The workers would be happier, and I think also from a management point of view it certainly would help considerably, but I do not suggest that those workers should be put on military pay. I would not interfere with their civilian pay at all.

And we would have to pay for it.

My final point is this. I want to refer to the question of pay. Unfortunately in the army to-day there is a certain amount of dissatisfaction because of the difference of the pay in some units. Let me quote the case of a mechanical transport driver. If a mechanical transport driver is seconded to “T” services, he will get 4/6 per day. Actually he getes 3/6, the A.C.F. rate, and he will get the extra 1/- as proficiency pay, whereas another mechanical transport driver will be sent to the Engineers and that man although he is driving a lorry with the Engineers is called a Sapper and he will get 6/- per day. Now take the case of a Barrister. He joins up and he only gets 3/6 per day—that is of course without his allowances for his wife and children. I am talking of his own pay. The Barrister with his high qualifications, B.A., B.S’c. will only get 3/6 per day. I know Barristers who I think are not worth 3/6 a day, but would not like to be personal any more than I would about members of Parliament who I do not think are worth 3/6 a day. But to come back to my point, these men who have degrees behind them, highly educated men, are paid at the rate of 3/6 a day, whereas those who are classified as artisans, men in the building trade, bootmakers and people like that, come under the artisan class and get a special rate of pay. The pay of the Class A artisan ranges between 6/- and 10/- per day. Now why should there be this differentiation in the soldiers’ pay, why should the bootmaker be allowed to get 10/- per day, and the lawyer, the degree man, the profession man, only 3/6?

Why should a member of Parliament get 17/6?

Because members of Parliament are members of Parliament, there are useful members of Parliament also and there are others who are of no use at all. These men have all given up their civilian duties, and I want to advocate that all military pay should be on a standard rate, whether it be 3/6, 4/6 or 5/6, put it as high as possible, but let it all be at a standard rate. I have no objection if a man is drafted to a particular unit and doing a special job of work, to that man receiving extra proficiency pay, but that proficiency pay must be granted by the unit he is drafted into. When the man joins in the first instance, he should sign on at a standard rate of pay. Let me quote you some instances. Here is the case of a painter, a married man with three children, he gets 10/- a day, his wife gets 4/6 allowance, and for each child he gets 1/-, his total rate of pay being 17/6. Now take the barrister or the skilled professional man, he gets 3/6, his wife gets 4/6, and for each child he gets 1/-; so the barrister only gets 11/- a day, whereas the painter or the bootmaker gets 17/6. The single painter gets 10/- a day, and the single professional man gets 3/6 a day. That applies to the poor old farmer too. He only gets 3/6. Now compare this with the New Zealand rates of pay. The single man is on a flat rate of 7/6 a day, that is the lowest pay. But the man can only draw 3/- while he is away, the other 4/6 being left in New Zealand in a bank or the post office, whichever he nominates, and that money remains there for him until he returns. The married man also gets 7/6 a day, and he is only allowed to spend 3/- of that. The other 4/6 goes to his wife. Besides that his wife gets 3/- a day, and for the first child he gets an extra allowance of 3/- and for each subsequent child 1/6 a day, so the New Zealand married man with three children gets 16/6, compared with 11/- here. The artisan in the New Zealand army gets proficiency pay of 1/- a day. The highest paid man in the New Zealand army as far as the ordinary soldier is concerned, is the cook, het gets 2/6 proficiency pay, and that I understand is on account of the long hours. To my mind whatever a man’s calling, as soon as he gets itno khaki he should come down to the same level from a pay point of view. To summarise it, the married New Zealand artisan with three children gets 17/6 a day, whereas the married South African artisan also get 17/6. That is the only case where the two scales of pay are similar. The New Zealand professional man with three children gets 16/6 a day, as compared with the South African’s 11/-. The New Zealand single man gets 7/6 and the South African 3/6. The New Zealand single mechanic gets 8/6 a day, whereas the South African single mechanic gets 10/-. I want to tell the Minister of Defence that he has mobilised an army of patriots who are not there from a monetary point of view. All they want to know is that the dependants they are leaving behind are being properly looked after. I am confident the Minister of Defence will be only too pleased to fall in with a more equitable system of pay than that which prevails at the present time.

I do not intend to reply to the speech of the hon. member who has just sat down. If I had to reply to him then I would only just like to draw attention of hon. members to the fact that he has accused us on this side of not sitting on the opposite of the House because we could not get jobs. We must accordingly take it that he and others sit on the other side because they can get them. That hon. member is known as one of the members who draws a double salary. He is one of the men who is so inspired with love for England that he is not prepared to go and fight for the Empire, but he is prepared to sit there and draw a double salary. He is one of those who is more in love with his pocket than with the cause. I think that that is enough for that hon. member. I want to draw the attention of the House to a statement which is constantly being made, and which was made inter alia last night by the Minister of Labour. He is not in his place. I am not surprised that he is not here. If I had received such a hiding as he got last night, I should not have been here to-day either, seeing that I might possibly get another as bad. One does not mind receiving a thrashing, but if they follow each other so quickly then it rather hurts one. I went to see the Minister about certain things which he said here last night. I told him that I was going to give him certain information to-day in the House. He said that he would very much like to have it, and therefore I am sorry that he is not in his place this afternoon. The cry is raised on the other side that this Government is prepared to give work to everyone in the country, whether physically fit or unfit, provided he wants work. Now what is the position in connection with those who are physically fit? The position is simply and briefly this, that when a person who is physically fit goes to the State and asks for work in order to be able to make a decent living then he is asked to take the red oath, and it is expected that he will sign that red oath, or otherwise there is no chance of his getting work. What is the result of that? They expect the guardian and the father of the people, which the Government ought to be, to give them a chance to make a living, but that guardian expects them to buy bread for their families with their own blood. They have to pay for their bread by their blood. I would like to prove it. One is sometimes asked to prove what one says here, and to prove what I have said here I want to quote this. I want to refer to this application form which lads have to sign. These advertisements are distributed over the whole of the country. We have seen them in big capitals in every village, and that there is an opportunity for every young man to enjoy a thorough technical training, that the State would pay for it, and such a lad would then subsequently be given an important position to be able to make a living. By means of the Press and otherwise that advertisement has been published throughout the country, and what are the conditions which lurk behind the advertisement? I have here in my hand the application form for the technical training. I have had the experience in my constituency which other hon. members have also had, that numbers of young men come to their member of Parliament and say: See, this is a good post which is advertised. Now we shall have an opportunity of going through a technical course in order to get work. We would very much like to go in for it, and what ought we to do? Most of those lads bring the form to us, the form which I have in my hand. It is the application form for that technical training, but it does not say on any part of that form that the persons who signs will be subject to being called up to do service of a military nature. The impression got by the boys was, and it is the impression which one would obtain from this form, that they would not have to do any service of a military nature. When they have signed this application form, and they are accepted, then we find that there is a sequel. On this application form we find the following in one paragraph—

But I could not find out that a single one of them had received circular No. D.G.O. 1. If the boys had received that circular and it had been brought to my notice, then it would have been a different thing, but even then it is still a proof that the boy can only get work if he is prepared to take the red oath. I just want to refer to this circular No. D.G.O. 1. Paragraph 4 (d) contains the following—

Here there is a reference to service, but the service now is in a military or in a nonmilitary capacity. As soon as the boys are accepted, then they are expected to undertake to perform service in a military as well as in a non-military sense. We see here that there is a systematic attempt slowly to drag our young lads in. It is a quotation from the form which is referred to in the application form, but as I have said, I do not find any of the boys with these forms. Only the application form, in which the boy declared that he was acquainted with the contents of circular D.G.O. 1. If he is accepted then he must sign a contract with the Government, and I have here before me the form of contract for citizens who are desirous of undergoing technical instruction, and to accept service in a military or nonmilitary technical capacity. In this form of contract we find in paragraph 1—

1. (a) To undergo a period of basic training provided by the Government in order to qualify him for either appointment in one of the military trades, or for employment as a technical worker in a nonmilitary capacity; (b) To serve and undergo training faithfully, honestly and diligently and to obey all lawful commands and requirements of the Government or those duly placed in authority over him or appointed to instruct him; and as and when called upon by the Government to do so during the period of this contract at any time after the satisfactory completion of the basic training to serve the Government faithfully, honestly and diligently, in either military or non-military capacity, at the option from time to time of the Government, for the duration of the war.

There we have it very clearly, and now notice what we find in paragraph (c)—

I am very glad that the Minister of Labour has now come in.

Good. I am now in my place.

I have made a very serious allegation, and I hope that the Minister will have an opportunity of replying, but of doing so in a better way than he tried to rebut the allegations which were made here last night, and I also hope that he is in a better mood than the one he was in last night, because then he was so upset that he did not understand his own rebuttal. I said that, so far as fit people were concerned, that is people who were physically fit, they could only get work if they took the red oath, that when they come to the state and asked for work they are always given the reply in one form or another, directly or indirectly, that they must join up with the military units. The Minister denied it, and he is a little late now, because I have quoted here from the application form which the boys want to get training on a technical basis have to fill up. I said that there was not a word said in that form about military service, but there is only a reference to form D.G.O. 1, and when we go to form D.G.O. 1 then we find that it is clearly stated in paragraph 4 (d) of that form, that the boys who enlist to undergo that technical course of training, undertake to be prepared at any time during the period of the contract, if and when their services are required by the Government, either in a militay or non-military capacity, to go and perform that service. What is still more. That boy has to sign a contract which inter alia provides—

The Government can call upon him to go and do military work at any time during his training and afterwards, and then we find in paragraph (c), and I want to bring this specially to the notice of the Minister, that the citizen has to say that of his own motion he undertakes—

It does not say in South Africa, or under the Defence Act, but it says “in Africa.”

What is wrong with that?

The Minister therefore admits that I said here that those boys who want to go through the technical training course must undertake that they will go and perform military service in any part of Africa.

Do you say that they must go and fight?

I am glad that we have had this admission by the Minister. He accordingly now admits that so far as the physically fit persons are concerned, he as Minister of Labour, has only one thing for those people when they come and ask for work—sign the red oath and go and fight for the Empire, and that is the Minister of Labour who tells us that he is going to look after the interests of the labouring classes— that is our charge against him. When the citizen of the country comes to his department and asks for an opportunity to work, so that he can make a living, then that is the attitute which the Minister and his Government take up. The fact really is that the Minister of Labour is not a Labour Minister in the Cabinet, but is is a „member of a War Cabinet.”

How do you read all that into it?

I have quoted my proofs, and the Minister has admitted them. The Minister is sitting over there, he will have an opportunity of rebutting them, but we do not want to have a repetition of the words which we had from him last night, but we want actions to show that he, as Minister of Labour, will make opportunities of work available for physically fit persons, other than service in seeing the war through, and outside of the provisions of the South African Defence Act, that he will make work available other than by forcing the people to sign the red oath. The onus rests on him, and he will have the opportunity this year of giving the proof whether he is a Minister of Labour who takes an interest in the position of the labouring classes in South Africa, or whether the interests of the Empire will weigh heavily with him. I have now spoken on the question of persons who are physically fit. Now I want particularly to make a few remarks about persons who are considered unfit. What is their position? In their case I want particularly to refer to the erosion prevention works in this country. This scheme was started to make provision for opportunities of work for a certain class of person who is described as physically semifit, persons who are not fit for other kind of work, and they are described in the annual report of the Department of Labour. I have examined several annual reports of the department, and year after year this class of worker is described in that way. In other words, the erosion prevention works were established—it was a different Minister who did so—to give a chance to that class of man, who was not suited for other work, of making a living. Those erosion works were stopped by the predecessor of the Minister, or rather by a different Minister, and this Minister of Labour is too weak to induce the Cabinet to continue with those works. I would like to make a few quotations out of the annual report of the department about these erosion prevention works. On page 10 we find the following—

That work has now been stopped, and I want to make a request to the Minister of Labour —but I would like him to listen to me, although I do not like depriving him of the privilege of chatting with the lady—I want to ask him what has become of those people who used to work on the erosion prevention works? Then I also want to refer to this little point. The report continues—

The department of the Minister did not say that wages were too high or high enough. They therefore apparently admit that the wages are too low. But what then is actually the reason why they refused an increase? The report says—

That is the reason why they do not want to make the wages of these workers more. I am reading it from the report of the Minister’s department. How are these things reconciled—this 5/6 a day and the 4/- a day, which they do not want to increase, how do they tally with the Minister of Labour’s own words, that every labourer ought to get at least 10/- a day? He had the opportunity here to increase the wages of these men by 6d. a day, but he does not do so, and he announces that if they get 6/- and 4/6 a day, then all those workers whom he named, are allured to leave their work and to come to the Government to be employed on the erosion works! I said that those works have now been stopped, and I would like the Minister to pay careful attention because I want to bring a point of special importance to his notice. I want, in the first place, to refer to the works which have been stopped. Money has been spent on the survey of the erosion works, and I say that there is quite a number of these works stopped, though they have already been surveyed. It is a good thing for the Minister to know this. The Minister said that he would be glad to have information on this point, and I have quoted the information to him from the report of his own department. The report says—

That is the number of approved works where the surveys had been completed. But did the work go on on those approved works? No, we find the following in the same paragraph of the annual report—

We therefore see that only on 293 of these schemes did the work continue, although 1,479 had been surveyed and approved. The report tells us that under ordinary circumstances these works would have provided work for the people for the next few years. Of course, ordinary conditions do not prevail to-day. There is a war going on, and that is why the work has been stopped. The work on these approved works has been stopped. There are individual cases, according to other hon. members, where the work had already been half completed, and there also the work was stopped. I do not want to say it, because I have not seen that myself. But I do say that the work has been stopped on over 1,000 approved works which have already been mentioned. What has now become of these people, about whom the report of the Department of Labour says that they are only fit for this kind of work? Have circumstances so improved in the country that they have been able to find a living elsewhere, or has the Department made provision for those people—or are they the people who, just like the 6,000 families in Johannesburg which are dependent on charity, the people who all over the villages on the countryside have to be supported by charity? I then asked the Minister: What has become of these people? They were entrusted to the care of the Minister, and we want to know from him what has happened to them to-day. I would like to refer to another matter, and I want the Minister to give me a direct answer. It relates to our road makers in the country, and it is more specially of importance to the road makers in the Free State. An undertaking was given by the Union Government that in respect of road makers, a wage subsidy would be paid to the Provincial Administration of the Free State on a descending scale over a period of three and a half years. I would very much like to have the Minister’s attention in this matter. Apparently the three and a half years have now lapsed. Now what has happened to the road makers in the Free State? The Minister of Labour is responsible for the men. A subsidy was paid on a gradually descending scale to make provision for the people. I am now specially referring to the white labour on the roads in the country, and I notice from the report of the Department of Labour, on page 11, that the number of subsidised labourers during January, 1939, in the service of provincial and divisional council works was 671 Europeans, in comparison with 202 Europeans in December, 1939. Therefore, from January, 1939, until December, 1939, the number dropped by 400, according to the report of the Minister’s own Department. What happened to the 400? I want again specially to refer to the position in the Free State. The Administration of the Free State was simply told that it could no longer receive the subsidy to keep the people at work on the roads. The Free State Administration would be obliged to include them in their own Administration. The Free State Administration did not have sufficient funds to retain the men in their service. What would the result have been? They would simply have thrown the people out of work, and they would have been stranded without means of existence. But something happened in the Free State which everyone who has a grain of humanitarian feeling must be proud of, and it is this: That the road makers who remained on in the work went to the Administration and said: “Make a reduction in our salaries, and on an equal scale with it pay the people who otherwise you would have to dismiss.” That came from people who drew low wages, possibly 5s., 6s. or 7s. a day. They had so much sympathy for their fellow-Afrikaners that they said: “Make a reduction from our poor wages, because otherwise our fellow-Afrikaners will lose their work.” The road makers of the Free State deserve the highest praise of everyone who has an atom of humane feeling. Now I want to make an appeal to the Minister of Labour. He is responsible for the position in which these people are, because he is not only Minister of Labour, but also Minister of Social Welfare. I want to ask him not to treat the people who are working on the roads as people receiving charity. They are in a constant state of uncertainty. But, first of all, I want to ask the Minister to make provision during the current financial year for a further allowance for the Free State Administration, and I want to ask him, in addition, whether he will see to it that the road makers who are now supporting their fellow road makers are compensated for what they have sacrificed in order to assist the other workers. It is the State which gets the beneft of the work on the roads, and the Minister ought to consider the matter favourably. I will further bring this matter personally to his attention, but I want to ask him whether he will not be prepared to undertake to compensate the people, who out of their poor wage have given up a part to assist the other people. Then I would like to ask the Minister—and I consider this a very serious matter—to regard road building as a national work. It is work which will have to continue for a long time, but now there are people who have been working for six or eight, or possibly ten years on the roads, and yet they do not know whether they may get their discharge to-morrow or the day after. These people are continually in uncertainty. Some of them are already highly trained technically. They are people who have been gaining experience all these years. I want to ask the Minister whether he will not give the assurance to all the people that they, under certain conditions, will remain on road building. If he removes that sword from over their heads—of their being suddenly discharged—then the people will be very thankful to him. Let the Minister make this a matter of permanent employment by his Department, subject to certain conditions which he may suggest, such as the conditions which exist in connection with any service. It will mean a great deal to those people. In the light, however, of the Minister’s past, and of his speech last night, when serious complaints were made against him, I fear that we cannot expect very much. He furnished the proof last night that we could not expect many of the things for which he used to plead in the old days. The interests of South Africa do not now come first with him, but the war budget and politics come first with him. If he is going to follow that path any further, and neglect the interests of the people in South Africa, then before the war is over, or immediately after the war is over, he will disappear, together with his party. There is one other matter I would like to refer to. I have pleaded with the Minister that the road work should be permanent where people can make a permanent living if they do good work and carry out their duties. We have a national road building programme which will take a long time to complete, and which may yet for a long time supply work for a large number of people. Now, however, we have heard the announcement that Italians will be used for national road work. I have from time to time in this House asked the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister who was going to pay these foreigners—the people who come in ships and who will be sent here as prisoners. That is to say, British prisoners, who are now being interned in South Africa. I have each time had the assurance that England would pay for them. As far as I know, England has up to the present not yet paid anything, although prisoners of war have been interned here since last year. Now again a large number are coming to South Africa, and we have to make provision for their maintenance, etc. It has been said that England will pay, that we need not be anxious, but the announcement that they will be used on the national roads certainty does not set our minds at rest. Is this an underhand way of making South Africa pay for the prisoners? Will the argument be used tomorrow or the day after that we used the prisoners for the building of roads, and that we therefore ought to pay for their maintenance charges? If that is his int ention, let him say so openly. We object to it, because if that is done then it means the spending of more money in connection with the war which should be used for finding work for the citizens of our country. I should be glad if the Minister of Finance will make a clear statement.

I want to take the opportunity which this debate affords to make one particular point, but while listening I was so struck with the contradictory nature of the last speaker’s remarks on one point that I feel they should be dealt with. As long as I have been in this House I have heard members opposite complaining incessantly throughout each Budget debate of the lack of technical training facilities for platteland youths. We have been told time and again that the platteland youth has no opportunity for technical training. We have been told that he is debarred from equal opportunities for earning his living with the town youth, and the accusation has been made against the Government that they do not concern themselves with giving the platteland youth the requisite opportunities Now to-day we have a different complaint. We are now told that because the Government is providing technical training it is once more doing the wrong thing! The hon. member who has just spoken complained that the boys who are given this technical training have to sign various undertakings, and he would have the House believe that those undertaking are the first indications that this training has something to do with the war effort. Now the hon. member and the whole country knows, as well as I do, that the whole of that technical training scheme which has been sponsored by the Government is part of the Government’s war effort. It was designed to that end, and it is meant for that purpose, and that purpose only.

That is exactly what we are complaining of.

It is part of your “see the war through policy.”

The hon. member has had his opportunity of having his say; I hope he will let me have my say now.

I won’t interrupt you again.

The hon. member knows perfectly well that that was part of the Government’s war effort. The Government announced it as part of its war effort, and that is the whole purpose of that scheme; and at the same time it will give these very platteland youths, whom the members of the Opposition have been speaking about in and out of season, the opportunity of getting technical training of a kind which they have been asking for for years, and yet because those boys, who are being trained free gratis and also gain a little too, are asked to sign an undertaking that if called upon they will serve the Government which trains them in some capacity, either military or non-military, hon. members over there have a grievance. It seems to me that the hon. member opposite once again forgets that we are at war. He forgets that we are facing a total war, a war against the totalitarian powers, and it seems to me that the only way in which he can be made to realise how fortunate we are in this country, and how fortunate the platteland boys are who not only get the opportunity for free technical training, but are also allowed to choose something in a military or non-military capacity, is by once again drawing his attention to the fact that that position is due to the very form of democracy which we have heard here endlessly abused during the last debate. I would draw the hon. member’s attention to that, and to the inconsistency of his complaints about those platteland children being given that opportunity. As I said, I make this point because it struck me as being a particularly fine example of the inconsistency of the Opposition, but the point I really rose to make is this. I want to say to the Minister of Finance how disappointed I was, and I am sure I speak here for the whole country, with the answer which he gave to a question which I put to him recently. The question was whether he proposed to introduce compulsory third party risk insurance this session, and if not this session, when? The answer he gave was that it was not possible this session, but that he hoped it might be possible next session. Frankly, I am more than dis appointed with this vague and ambiguous reply. The Minister will realise that I do not intend to argue the case for compulsory third party risk insurance here to-day. I have argued it in season and out of season. It is so strong a case that it no longer needs arguing. But I would remind the Minister of this, that as regards that particular form of legislation we are thirteen years behind New Zealand, and 11 years behind England, which is supposed to be a Tory stronghold. We are still eleven years behind England in waiting for a form of legislation which the country demands, which every road user agrees is highly necessary and yet though it has been considered by the Provincial Councils of this country, thought it has been considered by the Select Committee of this Parliament, we are no nearer getting that legislation than a suggestion by the Minister that possibly we may get it next year. I want to remind the Minister once more of the history of the legislation in this House. I want to remind him that in 1934 I personally from the experience. I had in my Chambers and from the experience which fellow Barristers have had in their Chambers, raised this matter in the Provincial Council. I was so convinced in 1934 of the necessity for this legislation that I pressed for it very strongly in the Transvaal Provincial Council. There it went to a Select Committee and an ordinance actually passed its second reading, and then, at the request of the Union Government it was held over because it was felt that it was desirable that this should be a Union measure. With that I myself agreed. Then at the very first opportunity which I got in this House after I had been elected, in the very first Budget debate, I asked the Minister’s predecessor to give this matter his attention and I made an appeal to him for legislation. In reply the Minister’s predecessor (Mr. Havenga) gave a definite assurance that legislation would be introduced next session. In my innocence of Parliament I accepted that assurance, and in the confidence of my case I took it for granted that when the Minister promised he would introduce legislation, that it implied also that legislation would be passed. I was sadly undeceived. The following session, true enough legislation was introduced, but then it went to a Select Committee after first reading, not after the second reading as I wished, and I want to remind the Minister of what happened in that Select Committee, though indeed he needs no reminder since he himself was the chairman of that Select Committee, and he was, I admit, very sympathetic. The result of the Committee’s finding was that there was a unanimous expression of opinion that legislation along the lines be introduced. Then came the war, and Sir, adumbrated by the Select Committee should since I am certainly the last to stand in the way of necessary war legislation, that year nothing further was heard of the matter.

The Government had its hands full without it, but the position is entirely different this session. The Government has got through the major portion of its war legislation. If members will look at the Order Paper of this session they will see a Forest and Veld Conservation Bill, a Merchandise Marks Bill, and a Transportation Amendment Bill. All very important measures no doubt, but not one of them in my opinion can be commensurate with the importance or the urgency of this third party risk legislation. And yet these Bills have already been dealt with by this House. I do not doubt, I say that these measures deal with important matters, but they deal with matters of property while the Bill which I am pleading with the Minister for is a Bill which will protect the lives as well as the property of our citizens. On this point there can be no doubt. From every class of road user we have requests for this Bill. Every motoring organisation in the country has interviewed the Minister stressing the need for this kind of legislation. Even the Insurance Companies favour it and have promised it at reasonable rates— 30/- to 35/-. There was also sent to me recently a resolution passed at the Conference of the S.A. Commercial Travellers’ Association, the men who use the roads of this country in and out of season, asking the Minister as a matter of urgency to introduce legislation of this kind. And yet we have nothing before this House as yet but a vague assurance from the Minister that possibly we may get it next session. Well, I am not satisfied with that. At the last question day I put to the Ministers concerned two questions. I put them side by side for a deliberate purpose. And these were the questions: I asked the Minister of Defence how many soldiers of the Union have been killed in battle since the country entered the war, and how many have been wounded? And this was the Minister’s reply: “There have been killed in battle since the Union entered the war four officers and thirteen other ranks. There have been wounded four officers and thirty three other ranks—total killed and wounded, 8 officers and 46 other ranks.” At the same time I asked the Minister of Finance in his capacity as Acting Minister of the Interior, “How many persons were injured and how many were killed during the year, 1st April, 1939, to 31st March, 1940, in motor vehicle accidents on the roads of the Union?” Here are the figures which the Minister gave me: Persons killed 1,026, seriously wounded 2,834, slightly injured 11,597; total injured 14,431. The grand total was 15,457 killed and injured on the roads of the Union. That is in one year. On the military front we have 8 killed and 46 wounded, on the home front we have 1,026 killed and 14,431 wounded. The figures speak for themselves. The figures speak more eloquently than I could do. If half the number killed on the home front had been killed on the military front the whole of South Africa would have regarded it as a disaster of the first magnitude, and my hon. friends on the Opposition benches would have made the rafters of this House ring with their protests against this slaughter, but because this slaughter goes on silently on the roads no legislation is introduced, and no one is concerned about it. I cannot stress too strongly my pleadings and my appeal to the Minister to see that something is done to put an end to this endless slaughter on the home front. Sir, I do not contend for a moment that this compulsory third party risk insurance will put a complete stop to this slaughter but it will certainly help. It will drive off the roads numbers of the hopeless vehicles responsible for much of the trouble, and also it will certainly see to it that those who are killed and injured on the home front will get compensation as far as money can compensate them for the injuries they have suffered. Let me give one final point. Do hon. members know that only one person in every three is insured even against third party risk? And let me remind the Minister that it is the man of straw who does not take out third party risk insurance. It is the very men with poor cars, with worn out machines, machines which are capable of dealing death and destruction, who do not take out insurance policies, and there is no possibility in the majority of cases of people like that paying compensation if they meet with accidents. I say again that that legislation is exceedingly overdue, and I appeal to the Minister to give us a definite assurance, a definite promise, that we shall not only have that legislation introduced next session but that it will be passed into law next session.

I think that so many, reproaches have already been made against the Government during this session in regard to its war policy, and what is connected with it, that I prefer this afternoon to draw the Government’s attention to the effects there will be of the Government’s interpretation of their policy in regard to the building up of our country. In my opinion the declaration of policy by the Government, a certain line of policy which the Government holds, will have an injurious effect on the uplift of our country. The Government, especially through the Minister of Finance, in his first budget speech when he asked for an amount for the war, told us that the social services of the country would not be injured. Now housing is one of the great questions in the social uplift of our national life. I am only just mentioning it. That is now being neglected. And the second thing which the Government, with its retrenchment measures is neglecting, is the settling of people on the land. That has been totally stopped. All this is, social uplift, because if you give a man land to occupy, or a house in which he can live, then necessarily you give him a status in the national life, and a better chance of acting as a citizen of the State. Those are two of the chief services in the country which ought not to be injured and curtailed in consequence of the war effort. And let me say that the amount which is required for that is not such a tremendous one that the Government cannot find it out of loan funds. We have already borrowed a sum of £30,000,000, we are now empowering the Government to borrow a further £10,000,000, which already brings the total up to £40,000,000. Let me in passing quote the Minister’s own words used in a speech he made to the Rotarians, namely, “There is £250,000 which was borrowed without interest.” I must honestly say that we on this side have the right of saying about the people who are supporting the Government that we cannot have a high opinion of their real patriotism and their support of the war effort if they can only lend £250,000 to the Government without interest, in connection with its war effort. That makes a sad reflection on the war effort complex which we are getting in the country when we see that the actual result is only a miserable amount of £250,000, which is lent to the Government without interest. That does not even mean that the amount has been given to the Government, but it has been lent, and they are getting it back again after a short period. I want, however, to come back to my point. I say that the retrenchment by the Government on social services is having a very handicapping influence on our national life, and when we bear in mind that after this war there will be still more stress, because there will be a great shortage of money, seeing that we are to-day exhausting our loan funds and weakening our finances, then we ought to be concerned about the position, and especially seeing that after the war the taxation which has been imposed will not be able to be reduced. We shall certainly have to pay the interest on that debt, and it will be a large amount which will have to come out of the revenue funds. There will be a lack of money, and if the brake has to be put on even at this time, then the position after the war will be still worse. The Minister may say that public works cannot be put up now, because we have not got the workmen to do it. In the ordinary villages in the country there are numbers of people who are without work, people who are unfit to go to the war, and other people who simply do not want to go to war. It is qualified masons, and people like them, who have to do the work. The building industry has come tp a standstill. Those men can be used to put up the works, and the cost will not be so much more. The Minister told us proudly that he expected to get an amount of £67,000 out of the’ forestry vote. I know that the Government, for some of its buildings, not for its show buildings, is making use of South African timber, and surely it will not injure the Government and cause damage to its war effort if it goes on with those buildings? The corrugated iron and timber which is required will surely not lead to a handicapping of the war effort. I say again that those are services which the Government ought to continue. The Government may say that at places like Johannesburg, and even on the Railways, many people have gone away. Suppose that many people have gone away—it may be that there is no lack of houses now, but those people have to come back again, and to keep those people alive after the war the industries in the neighbourhood of those centres will have to employ more and more people, with the result that more facilities for getting housing will be required, and if the Government were now to stop and handicap its special services, then the position would be very much worse after the war than it was before the war, and the position was already bad enough. I therefore say that, without taking up the attitude of a Judas, we can ask the Government not to neglect that side of the national life in the midst of the sums of money which it has to provide for the war. Now I would like to refer to another point, and that is that the Government, in its administration of the war, is wasting millions of pounds unnecessarily. There is a concentration of troops at certain large centres, and that necessarily involves your not only having to transport many people, but all the things that they use and need have to be transported. It is a large amount which is being swallowed up on costs of transportation alone. I think the Government ought to decentralise a little more. I want to say, for the information of hon. members of the Opposition, that the late hon. member for Winburg himself drew the attention of the Government to that. He asked, for instance, that an aerodrome should be built at Winburg, and he said that the Government should not centralise everything at one spot, but that there should be a little decentralisation, and that the people should be spread out. Now I want to point out that thousands of pounds, I might say millions of pounds, could be saved in connection with the war in that way. That would also give an opportunity to the neighbouring producers in those centres of delivering the produce which is needed for the camps. There will be a saving in costs of transportation for the producer and also for the Government, which has to carry all that produce over the Railways. It is unnecessary expenditure, a great deal of which can be saved. The Minister of Labour said last night—and he did so with pride in his voice —that the Government had kept the cost of living low. May I put this question to him very directly—at whose expense? The cost of living has been kept very low, but I want to emphasise that the cost of living has been kept low at the cost of the primary producer. Let us take the prices of produce. The price of mealies is no different to what it was before the war. There has been no change worth mentioning. There is no improvement worth mentioning in the price of farm produce. But what is the position when we regard the matter from the standpoint of the expenditure of the farmer? I want to mention one item. Barbed wire used to cost 16s. 6d. before the war. To-day it costs £1 12s. 6d. Implements are all dearer owing to the war, but I say again that the cost of living has been kept down at the expense of the farmer, whose costs of production have not gone down, but have gone up. The Minister of Finance said that the position of the farmer was so sound that the Land Bank said that the farmers were not even borrowing money any longer. They cannot borrow. It is dangerous for them to do so. To-day when there ought to be a great demand for their produce they get a small increase of prices, an increase which hardly balances the position, and the people are taking that into account. It is very wise on the part of the farming population in our country that they do not want to borrow money in the circumstances. They are afraid of the day which will come after the war when they will possibly not even be able to pay the interest on their debt. The farmer sees no hope, and he realises that he ought rather to try to hold on to what he has, and that this is not the time for him to exhibit a spirit of enterprise. It is, however, another sign to us that the finances of the country are slowly being centralised in the loan funds of the Government. If that is a prophecy to us that we should not borrow any more money from the Land Bank, then it is an indication that the day will come when we will want to borrow from no one, because the prospect is such that we will no longer be able to venture to do so. I would like to say a few words in connection with the amendment which was moved by the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth) on behalf of the Opposition. I want to say clearly that we are voting against the Government, and all money which it is spending in matters where the war is concerned, because we voted against the war on the 4th September, and we will not give the Government any money for an aggressive war. There we understand each other very well. I am very glad to say that in regard to the first item in the amendment—that all expenditure on defence which is not strictly in accordance with the Defence Act, and made within the limits of it, should immediately be stopped—we will vote for it. That was the policy of our great leader Gen. Hertzog, and I am very glad that the Opposition, in its astuteness has thrown even that policy overboard, but has put it into the amendment in another form. We can vote for that point. In connection with the point of making more adequate provision for social services, I do not want to say any more now, but I would like to speak on the allowances for the cost of living. Here I am voting with the Opposition, and I want to point out to the Government that during the last war—and I do not believe that my memory is playing me false here—there is also an allowance paid for the cost of living, and the officials who earned £1,200 and £1,500 a year received an allowance of £150 and more. The people who drew from £150 to £200, got from £10 to £20. The cost of living allowances of the official with a salary of £1,500 was in reality as high as the salary of the low paid officials, who only got an allowance of £15 or £20 a year. In times like these the Government ought to make the scale balance, and it ought to know that the man draws a salary of £150 has to eat just as much food as the official who draws £1,200. I feel therefore that it is a very unsound policy which was followed in the past, and as the Government is now once more going to pay an allowance in respect of the cost of living, it ought to reverse the scale, and to pay more to the person who gets £150 than to the person who gets £1,200 or £1,500. If we do that then the scale will be more evenly balanced, and then we shall be doing justice. I think I have proved to the Minister that the primary producer is the person who has not yet been benefited and we are now on the eve of the next budget. If the Minister is going to impose new taxation now—and he held out the prospect of that in the famous speech in which he said that the population would willingly bear the increased taxation— I think that the word ought to be gladly— when he is on the very point of making new taxation proposals, I want to tell the Minister that if he speaks of gladness, he must not go and look for that happiness amongst the primary producers, but amongst those people who are not placed in the position which I have already sketched. Take the middleman. When the Government levies additional taxes, he does not pay. He passes it on to the consumer, and he adds an additional few pence or few shillings to it, because he has to collect it, and he has the trouble of making up the statements. The primary producer does not have the privilege of passing the burdens or obligations on to the shoulders of other people, it has already been pointed out that the ordinary taxpayer, including the farmer, is already taxed to the extent of 71 per cent. more than in 1938. The rebate of 30 per cent. was abolished, and then there was an addition of 20 per cent., with the result that he paid 71 per cent. more in income tax. I think that the Minister ought to take this into consideration when he introduces his new taxation proposals, and that he ought especially to show grace to the primary producer. We had an attempt last night on the part of the Opposition—a very poor attempt on the part of the hon. member for George—really to state the economic policy of the Opposition exactly, and after him the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman) also tried to add to it the policy of the Opposition towards the Labour Party, but he also was so vague that one could turn a cart and horses in it, and there was actually no danger of our hitting the fence on one side or the other. I want to tell my hon. friends what the economic policy of the Afrikaner Party is. We are not ashamed to announce our economic policy. We do not have to be afraid of groops in our party, and of putting our economic policy in such a way that we do not impinge on one side or the other and frighten people away. We stand together, we are perfectly sound, and we are not ashamed to make our economic policy known to the people and to the wide world. I noticed last night that the Leader of the Opposition began to be afraid when the hon. member for Fordsburg started speaking, but he was once more quite at ease and when he noticed how vague the hon. member was, how the hon. member became vaguer and vaguer, he became more and more at ease. In our programme of principles we describe our economic policy as follows—

1. (a) The maintenance of confidence in the economic future of the country will be guaranteed by protection of its finances as well as its capital assets and resources which serve for the promotion of the progress and development of the country and population.

Is that the programme of action?

It is the programme of principles, and the hon. member need not be in a hurry. He will hear more still before I have finishd. We feel uneasy in connection with our finances, and we would like to hear from the Minister what the position is. He said, on a previous occasion, that if inflation went too far in England, that we could then not follow England. I see that even in the Brtish Parliament questions are being asked about possible inflation. There is a deficit of £600,000,000 of expenditure over against revenue, and the question is whether that will not cause inflation to be adopted. We are uneasy about it, and the Minister of Finance will render the country a service if he can set our minds at rest on this point, that if inflation is introduced in England he will detach the South African pound from sterling. Our economic policy further, is—

1. (b) The two great primary industries, agriculture and the development of the mineral resources of the Union, are recognised as the foundations of the permanent, material welfare of the country, which in addition ought to be promoted by an ancillary development of trade and manufactures in a way to promote the permanent prosperity and independence of the country.
2. (c) A sound financial policy which will bear in mind the necessity for thrift in the administration being observed, with a fair division of the incidence of taxation, and with the use, so far as possible, and as circumstances may show to be desirable, of temporary assets of the country in such a way as to serve in the development of promoting its permanent resources, and its economic stability.
3. (d) In conformity with this, the party declares itself definitely against any policy or line of conduct which is calculated or which has the tendency to promote a conflict of classes, or to sacrifice any national interest to the financial powers.

I think that we are very clear in connection with this.

What is your policy in connection with labour matters?

I will provisionally give this answer. My hon. friend cannot tell the labourers in the country to-day what the actual position towards them is going to be if his party comes into power on account of all the tendencies that are prevailing in his party. I want to tell him this. Their tendencies are very divergent They have one tendency in their party which will possibly say to the labourer, who will not work for a definite wage, to-morrow or the day after, that he will have to go to the concentration camp. We shall first of all have to see what their labour policy is. I have confined myself to the economic policy—it surely includes the labour policy—and we are very clear. I would like to ask the Minister of Finance this question, that, although he has received these few suggestions from this side of the House, from a party in opposition, he will give his careful attention to the first point that I have mentioned, and that is that he should not economise on the social services, and particularly not on housing, at this time. The second is that he should think of the point that the farmers at present are not amongst those people who can create, because there is a war, but that they are amongst those who are bearing the heaviest burden, and when he formulates his taxation proposals, I think that his own supporters who are farmers will ask them to think of the economic factors which are pressing so heavily on us nowadays that we are so restricted that we cannot even borrow more money.

I hope the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Liebenberg) and his party will succeed in achieving something which will make their influence felt in political life, and which will make South Africa normal again. It would appear to me that in the re-orientation which is taking place that is what his party mainly has in view, and he has stated outright that they would not allow themselves to be used as a sort of inbetween party to maintain the balance. They can achieve something in the political life of South Africa which eventually will have a tremendous amount of influence. I hope they will continue along that course. It is high time that a lead was given in certain quarters in regard to what we shall be able to regard as the main corner stones of the country’s policy, and I hope that my friend and his colleagues sooner or later will succeed in that. So much for the Afrikaner Party, and now I want to come back to the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth). I like to see him here. He creates an atmosphere of friendliness. I like his presence, and that being so I should have liked to have seen him here now, because I want to refer to certain points which the hon. member made on behalf of his party. Now that the war has been going on for 17 or 18 months we have heard the hon. member tell us clearly where his party stands in regard to the war. He himself stated here: “Now nobody need ask us where we stand any longer.” “We say definitely where we stand in regard to the war expenditure,” and he added that henceforth there need no longer be any doubt as to what was the position of his Party in regard to the war expenditure. He proceeded immediately to say that so far as he and his party were concerned they were not prepared to give their consent to one single penny being spent on the war, and as a reason for that attitude he said this on behalf of his party: “We take up that attitude because this is a war of aggression and not a defensive war.” During the past few months the hon. member and his party have so often interrupted us and have asked us: “What are you fighting for?” but since the South African Army have been carrying on in an effective manner and now that the Springboks are proceeding from one triumph to another, now that our army has proved to my hon. friends opposite that they have not brought the war on to South African territory, but that they are keeping the war far away from our borders, and now that the Prime Minister’s policy is proving itself triumphant, now that the Prime Minister has guaranteed the country against invasion and has prevented the cruelty of war coming to us, we find that they have not got a word of thanks to spare for the Prime Minister or for that army of ours. First of all they asked what we were fighting for, but now that they see what is happening every day, now that they see one victory after another, now we do not hear a word of appreciation, not one word of appreciation of the fact that those men are keeping the war thousands of miles away from South Africa—instead of getting words of thanks and appreciation we get this attitude adopted by hon. members opposite, that they refuse to vote one single penny for those people. We have had members like the hon. member for Potgietersrust (the Rev. S. W. Naudé) stating that this side of the House wants to go and fetch the war away from the North and bring it here. No, thanks to the triumphant attitude and actions of our army we are keeping the war there. We have kept the war out of our country, and yet my hon. friends over there are ungrateful. The only thanks they have for those people who are sacrificing their lives is that they are not going to vote a single penny for them. The hon. member for George also raised violent objections to the allowances being paid to the soldier and to his wife and children. That is another bit of evidence of the attitude adopted by hon. members opposite. The war is being kept away from our borders. Hon. members over there would have been delighted if our army in the North had been defeated, and if the enemy had come here and bombed Cape Town. Then they would have been happy. No, hon. members over there are adopting an attitude which will not redound to their honour in days to come. I shall tell you, Mr. Speaker, what they will do. Hon. members opposite are indulging in prophesies all day long; now I also want to make a prophesy. When our army has finished with the enemy in Africa, and when our army returns here with the laurels and the glory it has achieved, hon. members opposite will try to deprive them of those laurels. They will then forget their ingratitude, their un-Afrikaans and un-patriotic attitude towards those people who have taken up the cudgels on their behalf, and who have made South Africa safe. When the war is over they will be glad to stand by the graves of those men and say, “Here lie the men who have given their lives for our honour,” and then they will pretend that they have stood by those men.

Tell us what happened in the hotel in Aliwal North?

This Government a short while ago put up an army, not an army of “hands-uppers” such as hon. members opposite want us to believe, but an army of men who are upholding the name of South Africa and who have definitely proved themselves to-day to be men, to be the Springboks of South Africa, who are worthy of their great name throughout the world. But those are the thanks which that army is getting from men who sit here in safety, the men who are making the profits and who are benefiting from the war. Have we had one good word from those people for the army which has been fighting for them ever since the outbreak of war? No, all we have had has been contumely and contempt in the worst sense of the word. But our army will gain great tributes for itself in the North, and as Afrikaners members opposite will have the right to be proud of them; they have not got the right to run down, belittle and treat with contumely and contempt, as they are continually doing, those who are fighting the battles for them, those who are willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of South Africa. They have not got a good word to say for those who are fighting for them, they only use terms towards them in an endeavour to belittle and cast reflections on them. The thanks which our army gets from them are words of contempt and insults, and I hope hon. members afterwards will realise that the hopes they have cherished, namely, that they will have the honour and the privilege of negotiating with Hitler and of discussing conditions for South Africa—I hope that they will realise that they were wrong in their attitude, and I hope that the day will come when they will show gratitude to the men of our army. I want to avail myself of this opportunity to express words of praise for, and to honour our Springboks who are in the North, and who are going from triumph to triumph. It is their due, and it behoves every member of this House to pay a tribute to those men. For the first time hon. members opposite have now got so far as to say: “Up to the present we have always doubted ourselves, but we have now taken up a stand.” It is strange that the attitude which hon. members have adopted so far has always been one of hesitation, one of uncertainty; they were not prepared to emphasise their attitude, and they were always contradicting each other. Yesterday we had the spectacle here of the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman) saying: “We are not a party which appropriates unto itself the right to feel convinced that we are going to govern this country.” Ever since they have been in opposition they have been wanting to take over the reins of Government; they proposed a vote of no confidence, but so hesitant and uncertain has their policy been that the hon. member for Fordsburg and others have had to admit that they have no Labour policy yet; but this is what the hon. member for Fordsburg said: “Our Labour policy will be announced at the opportune time.”

I did not say that we had no policy, but what I said was that it would be announced ere long at the right time.

What is the use of hiding your light under a bushel, what is the use of lighting a candle or a lamp and then hiding them under a bushel? Hon. members opposite have been struggling with this question all the time, and now they come along and they say that one of these days they will announce their Labour policy. I say that they dare not announce their Labour policy to the world. Hon. members on the other side of the House are not able to lay down a proper Labour policy.

How much extra does a captain get while the war is on?

Those are the sort of things which hon. members over there talk about, those are the sort of things they have been putting questions about in this House, and they have had their answers, so what sense is there in those interjections? Surely the hon. member knows better. Has he not yet learnt the art of interrupting at the right time and also at the wrong time?

We only want to point out that it is a paying concern.

After all their trouble, after all those months of struggling, they have not yet got a Labour policy; but the hon. member for Fordsburg has now come along and has suggested something vague which, of course, can be changed to-morrow or the day after, and which may go in a totally opposite direction. Can we take much notice of the criticism of hon. members over there if they are as inconsistent as all that, because I am quite convinced that this so-called foundation of theirs will be destroyed again and will be contradicted again on some occasion or other by the hon. member’s own colleagues? The hon. member for George in the past, exactly like other hon. members over there, and this evening again, boasted enormously of something which was achieved by another Government, namely, the Pact Government. The hon. member is trying to take credit for other people’s actions. What was achieved was not achieved as a result of the actions, or as a result of the initiative of his party; he has no right to pat himself on the back for that, because he should know that the iron and steel industry was not established as a result of the action of his party, but of my party. One does not want to be disagreeable, but one should remind hon. members over there of the facts. What right has the hon. member to say that the iron and steel factory is a Nationalist Party product? Does not the hon. member know that the feathers of one bird will never grow on the body of another bird? Feathers of that kind will soon become dull, but the hon. member to-day is trying to show off in the feathers of another party, because the initiative did not come from the hon. member’s party. Do we not remember the fact that the hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. Erasmus) and others repeatedly stated that they did not want to establish factories at the expense of the State—as the Labour Party wanted them to do? How often did not they and their papers state so openly? They were opposed to the establishment of such industries at State expense, and now they come along and they take credit for those things.

Are you not talking now about the S.A.P. men on your side of the House?

The hon. member is trying to hunt with the hounds and run with the hares; they want to take credit for everything. They talk of what they think will be good for the country, but when it comes to a definite policy they are lacking, they do nothing. They are quite unable to take up any definite attitude or stand.

Who voted in favour of the iron and steel industry, and who did not?

What was their attitude in regard to the war policy? Even there they are hardly able to take up any stand. One moment one hears them paying tributes and doing honour to Hitler, and the next moment the leader of their party (Dr. Malan) says that they do not want Hitlerism here. They are continually changing their attitude. As I said—they are not yet able to pronounce their Labour policy. That is because they have not got one. But none the less they make a great noise instead of taking a stand and defending a policy which is radically different from that adopted by the Government. No, instead of that they come along here with a whole lot of overloaded sentences and complaints which do not exist. The hon. member for Namaqualand (Lt.-Col. Booysen) and others get up and put forward a whole lot of complaints which in actual fact do not exist. All I want to tell them is this: “The more one complains, the heavier the burden of one’s sorrow.” Hon. members over there never stop complaining, but if one analyses their complaints there is nothing in them. The hon. member for George, for instance, complained of pensions being cut down for the purpose of obtaining money for war purposes. He should know better. He should know that a thing like that cannot be done, and that it is not done. The hon. member for Kensington has already challenged him to produce documents in connection with pensions which, according to him, have been cut, and to give the reasons why those particular pensions have been cut. He will not do it. It is quite easy on the platteland, when they are among their own people, the members of their party, when they are entirely isolated, to tell the people that the money of the poor is being taken away to carry on the war, but they know that it is not so.

It is the truth.

It is misleading, and that is the way in which people are unnecessarily goaded into a state of fury. Hon. members over there think that it behoves them to make people cross, to annoy people against the Government. Those rumours, those platform stories, can only go a certain length. One day hon. members will pick the bitter fruit of their folly. I want to tell hon. members over there that I never blame them when they differ from me in principle, but I hope they will agree with me when I say that they should put an end to one thing, and that is that members of this House should stop making statements here in this House and on the platforms which they know in their hearts of hearts are not true.

The hon. member must not intimate that other hon. members say things here which they know are not true. The hon. member knows that that is in conflict with the rules of the House.

I say that they should know that those are not facts; I think, with all due respect, Mr. Speaker, the language I have used is as mild as any man can use. In what other way can a member express himself here except to say that the contentions of another member are not correct? I say that these are not facts.

The hon. member cannot say that a member knows that what he says is not a fact.

I do not want to differ from you, Mr. Speaker, but I say they should know that these are not facts. The hon. member for Fordsburg is not a stranger in regard to the matters which he spoke about here last night. On previous occasions many years ago he had the same habit and he used to make statements devoid of all truth. It does not behove any member of this House to get up here and make statements for which he has no grounds. If it, were to happen on my side I would disapprove of it just as strongly. I believe in our criticising each other but we have not got the right to make statements which we are unable to prove.

I can prove every statement that I have made.

I blame the hon. member because I consider that he had the opportunity of informing himself as to the true condition of affairs.

What statement did I make which I did not prove? Your Minister acknowledged it.

What did the Minister of Labour acknowledge? He acknowledged that certain things had taken place. The hon. member wanted the House to believe that those things were done by him as Minister.

Is there not such a thing as joint responsibility of a Cabinet?

However much the hon. member may differ from the Minister, he should know the Minister better, and he should have found out exactly what the position was before making a statement like that.

Is not there such a thing as joint responsibility of a Cabinet?

Of course there is.

Then surely he must be to blame.

But the hon. member wanted to create a totally different impression. He wanted the House to understand that the Minister of Labour was personally responsible for it.

He is personally responsible because he is the responsible Minister in regard to those matters.

Now the hon. member is again trying to say that the Minister of Labour was personally responsible for tear gas bombs being used.

Yes.

I deny that, and I say that it does not become any hon. member to make a statement of that kind. He knows that it is devoid of all truth.

Does the hon. member wish to say that the Minister has no responsibility?

I have not got the whole day at my disposal to reply to interruptions. I want to continue my remarks and I want to submit another matter to the Government’s consideration. The Opposition so far has argued very superficially on a number of different points. The Opposition anticipates a number of difficulties which will result from the war. They are not suggesting any policy by which they want to combat all the difficulties and threatening dangers which they anticipate.

Stop the war.

I want to make a suggestion which I want the Government to give its serious consideration to, and I want to ask hon. members opposite to get away from their superficialities for a little while. Let us get a bit deeper down and let us see whether we cannot suggest something more constructive. I want to suggest to the Government that it should take into review the whole of our financial system in South Africa and see whether in these times of crisis we cannot proceed to take a step which other countries have taken, and which will prove effective, namely the institution of a State Bank, as a result of which we shall be able to place the credit of South Africa under Government control. I have been pleading for this for years, and I have said over and over again that the Government must be forced to take steps which will be more effective. The previous Government was, and the present Government is forced, to do patch work which will never prove effective. Boards of Control are appointed under the Marketing Act and we are trying to stabilise prices in order to help those same people for whom members opposite, and also members on this side of the House, are pleading, namely the farmers, so that they may be assisted to get living prices for their products. Various methods are being tried in order to help those people but we cannot get away from the fact that the control measures and the Marketing Acts are patch work, while the great evil is to be found in the fact that the banks are controlling the money. The whole of our financial system is under the control of private banks. I am not in a position to go into full details because it would take a few hours for me to do so, but what is it that we are suggesting? On behalf of my party I am suggesting that the Government should proceeed to the institution of a State Bank for the purpose of controlling our own credit in our country. We want the powers which the commercial banks have to-day to be handed over to the Government. Let me give an instance. If this building for instance should belong to a bank, they would be entitled to regard the building as a fixed asset—which it is, as a matter of fact—and in consequence they would have the right to put into circulation, to print, a quantity of money. It should be known to every hon. member of this House that never yet in the history of South Africa has the money in circulation been covered by gold, but the power to circulate money based on fixed assets and not on gold is entrusted to private hands, it is in the hands of the banks. And the result is that if the Government gets into bad odour, and I say this as a supporter of the Government, then the banks can do with the Government as they please. What I mean is that the banks can cause a depression whenever they want to, and never yet has there been a depression in South Africa or anywhere in the world which has not been caused exclusively by the banks. What is the position to-day? The State is ruled under such conditions that if it wants a certain amount of money, if it wants credit, it goes and borrows from the private banks. The banks have to stand good for us. That is all. Then we tax the people and we pay capital plus interest on the money which we have borrowed. Say for instance an individual is worth £10,000, and he goes to another man who is worth £5,000 and he asks: “Stand security for me with my shopkeeper so that I can buy from him,” what is the position then? The man who has £5,000 stands security for the man who has £10,000 and that is exactly the position of our Government under the existing system, and when we get credit we pay capital and interest. The question which I want to put to the Government, and to all members of this House, is whether we are going to continue under this old system of saddling the people with an ever-growing national debt, with debts and debts, which will be carried over on to future generations. Where are we going to end? To my mind this position is unnecessary and I put my scheme forward for the consideration of the Minister of Finance; I want to tell him that nobody in this world is so wise and so far-seeing that he cannot learn something from someone else. It behoves us to learn something from our enemies. If Germany and Italy continue to wage war for 500 years and they come forth out of that war, even if perhaps they have been totally smashed up, they will not have a pennyworth of debt. Let us at least learn something from our enemies if we can learn nothing else. The system which I have adambrated is one which will enable one, when the war is over, to be in a position to develop the country. Or are we to have the position again that when the war is over we will be saddled with a tremendous burden of debt? We have won the war, but in spite of that we have encumbered ourselves with a tremendous debt. Under the other system we can wage war and the day when the war is over the nation will, not be overloaded with a war debt which can never be paid, but we shall have capital available to tackle rehabilitation schemes which the Government may want to tackle, and we shall not be dependent on the good will of the bank. We shall then be able to establish factories in this country because we shall have the necessary capital at our disposal.

Support us. We shall introduce that when we get into power.

I wish what the hon. member were saying were true, but I have heard that kind of yarn from his colleagues when we were in the Opposition together; when it came to the point they were just as much in the throttling grip of the capitalistic system so far as the party was concerned—I do not mean him personally.

We shall improve the position.

I want to submit to the Minister of Finance, in all seriousness, and with all the emphasis I can, that the Government should tackle any means it can find to bring the war to a successful conclusion, while at the same time under the suggestion which I have just made we shall also be able to develop South Africa and overcome the difficulties which are ahead of us. There is only one course along which it can be done, and that is for the State to take into its own hands the powers which the private banks have to-day. Possibly the Minister and his colleagues will say that that is socialism. I do not know whether it is socialism or any other ism …

National Socialism.

Whatever it may be. But if it were to relieve South Africa of its ever growing debt, it should enable the Government to help the farmers to get rid of the oppressive mortgage burdens; if it would enable the Government to develop industries in South Africa, if it would enable the Government to bring about unparalleled development in South Africa, then I do not care what kind of ism it is. Don’t let us be so small and narrow-minded as to say that it is a kind of ism, and that for that reason we cannot touch it. Perhaps we may be able to carry on under the old system, but the Government must take account of the consequences which will result from the war. I am speaking now as a supporter of the Government’s, but I am not thinking in terms of the war alone. Nobody likes a nice funeral better than I do, but I prefer a pleasant life to a nice funeral, and I want the people to have the life to which they are entitled. I think the Minister of Finance should hold up a ray of light to us. Let us get rid of this old system which we are being ruled under. Can we afford to go on as we are doing? Can we afford further to increase our taxes? Here and there we may succeed, but I tell hon. members that they may perhaps succeed in making the taxation three times as heavy as it is to-day; we will not be able to pay off their debts, we will not be able to get out of the troubles which we are in to-day. There is only one way, and I ask the Minister to learn something from the enemy, and that is how to handle our own money in this country, and which country in the world is able to do so better than South Africa? We are in the fortunate position that in relation to our international debt we relatively have more gold at our disposal than any other nation. As a result of that we can in regard to our international trade, whichever country we are dealing with, during the war or after the war, always meet our international obligations—on the gold standard if necessary, or by means of gold, or with guaranteed gold. But what is our position? As soon as the Government’s policy does not meet with the approval of the banks, as soon as it is not in their interest, they are able within a month to cause a depression. If they are tired of the present Government or if they notice that the people are getting tired of the Government and are beginning to turn, they can decide to give the other side a chance. They can cause the Government to be defeated. In the days of the S.A.P. Government it was the banks which caused the Government to be defeated and the banks were responsible for the Nationalist Party going under. And the banks will also cause this Government to be defeated. I am now speaking as 100% supporter of the Government in this war. The banks will force the Government to go under. Let us take the bull by the horns and hand over to the State the powers which the banks have to-day. We have this position in the country, that every worker, whether he supports the Opposition or the Government, will be available if necessity arises. The Government, if necessary, can commandeer every worker. In some cases they may not be prepared to go voluntarily, but the masses are prepared in the hour of crisis to make their sacrifices and to stand by the Government of the country. But we do not find that willingness for sacrifice with concentrated capital. No, they believe that the Government is finance, and finance is Government. The sooner the Government realises this the sooner shall we have a free Government which can act in accordance with its own free will in the interest of the people. The people who have the power in their hands to-day, concentrated capital, can make things very difficult for the Minister and his colleagues; they are not inspired by a feeling of patriotism, because the world is their fatherland. If it suits them they will concentrate money in Germany, or wherever it may be. To them there are no boundaries, but we who are entrusted with the higher task of ruling the country in such a manner that we shall do the best for the people, we have to take this matter into serious consideration. I feel that practically 80 per cent. of the intelligent thinking people are convinced that the present-day system may continue for a certain time longer; but the day, or the year or the hour will come when it must collapse. We do not want it to come in a revolutionary way. We have confidence in the brilliant thinking powers of the Minister of Finance and his colleagues, and we trust that they can also read the signs of the times, and when they see that the waves are rising then we hope that they will use the intelligence they have to prevent this country becoming the prey of these waves—we hope they will see to it that this country will benefit from these waves. We are passing through a period of tremendous waves, and the men who are entrusted with the control and the government of our country must watch the direction of the waves and benefit from that, and they must see to it that the waves do not overwhelm us. Let the Minister consider matters; perhaps he may want to appoint a Select Committee or a commission of experts in this country, and I am convinced that they can come to no other conclusion but that the suggestion which I have put forward in all sincerity and humility constitutes the only means of saving South Africa from the morass, and of eventually bringing South Africa to a position such as we all want to see in this country. But if the Government does not do that, and if it listens to people who hold that we must carry on with the old system, then all of us will one day become the victims of that system. [Time limit.]

It is a pity that the hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. M. J. van den Berg) is not here. He raised a lot of dust here this afternoon, he spoke for forty minutes and eventually he got to a state bank. Beyond that he said nothing. So far as I can see he used his state bank story in order to protect himself together with the Minister of Labour and his other colleagues behind him, because he was unable to produce any evidence that anything had been done for the working man and the poor man of South Africa during the past eighteen months while the Minister of Labour has been sitting in that capitalistic cabinet. I want to tell the hon. member this, that he is i being lulled to sleep by that liberalistic, capitalistic, democratic government sitting opposite. The hon. member failed to show any justification for their occupation of their seat in the Cabinet, except to see the war through. I should like to assist him by mentioning something which the Minister of Labour has had done in the Cabinet, except to see the war through. I should like to assist him by mentioning something which the Minister of Labour has had done in the Cabinet to assist the working men, but I know of nothing that he has done; still there is one thing I can think of and that is that the hon. member himself is getting an additional 28s. per day as a Captain, and he has brought his influence to bear also to get double pay for his colleagues. I want to prophesy that that international, socialistic party is going to be just as dead in the future as it is now. The Afrikaans working man is not going to listen any longer to those international, socialistic speeches which they have made in this House and which have never achieved anything yet. The Afrikaans people stand by this side of the House which will do everything necessary for the working man and the poor man. And the position of affairs is one such as one does not get in South Africa alone. It is not a condition which we find in South Africa only. Recently on the 1st January a people’s convention was to have been held in London, and the reason why that convention was to have been held was this—

Who said that?

It is an appeal made by people in London who called this convention which is called the People’s Convention. They go on to say this—

And then we have this—

Those are the things which the people are complaining about to-day, and which the Minister of Labour has complained about— he is the man who to-day is sitting there safely in the hands of that capitalistic government. I can assure the Minister that the Afrikaans working man, and I also include the English working man, are finished with that kind of international socialism such as he has been proclaiming. They want a Government which will look after the interests of the people, which will not only talk about it, but which will procure deeds. I want to show here how the Minister of Labour—not so long ago either—and I do not want to go back to 1922 when he was annoyed with the present Prime Minister because the Prime Minister had his people on the Rand fired at—I do not want to go back 18 years into the past, but I want to point out that the Minister changed his opinion apparently within a very short space of time. I only want to go back two years, shortly after the last election in 1938. What did the Minister of Labour say then? The question was put here yesterday and he was asked what he had done to give effect to what he had said in the past, to what he said he would do for the workers of this country? In 1938 the Minister spoke as follows about the messengers in this House—

I ask what the Minister has done to bring about those improvements? Was it not only a case of words and promises which were used to impress the people outside? As soon as the Minister has an opportunity of doing something he does nothing. He goes further in regard to the young men who during the session

That is a matter for Parliament itself, and I do not think the hon. member can criticise the Minister on that account. Parliament has a Committee which deals with that question.

Very well, Mr. Speaker, then there is another matter which I should like to deal with and that has nothing to do with Parliament. In one of his speeches in 1938 he told us what his Party was going to do if it got into power. Somebody asked him where all the money was to come from for those grandiose schemes. His reply was—

What has be done in that respect? I go further. Seeing that we have this position in the country to-day, that our old people and our semi-fits get 5s. per day. I ask the Minister to tell us what he has done to improve that position? During the short session last year, or the first part of this session, I asked the Minister of Finance whether provision would be made for the poor people so that they would get better wages, the people earning 5s. per day, the old people and the seim-fit. The Minister of Finance was unable to comply with my request. I do not know what was the reason. I said at the time that the Minister was asking for £40,000,000 for the war, and I asked him to add another million to be used to help the people in receipt of low pay. But the Government did not want to listen to that. The Minister of Labour, in his confusion yesterday, after the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman) had attacked him, asked that we should give him an instance to show where he had done anthing to curtail social services. I want to refer the Minister to the speech which I made here last year, and where I complained that he had kicked the girls of the Kappie Commando out of their building. That building was handed over to the Women’s Air Service. There is a social service which was curtailed. Those girls were put on the street. I made a very polite request to the Minister to give something else in place of that building, but he did nothing. The Minister stated yesterday when he was attacked that he was not giving the semi-fit and invalided people any smaller grants than he had given them in the past. He stated that an additional amount of £20,000 per year was being spent on those services, but the Minister did not say that that additional £20,000 was being spent because fresh applications had come in. I can mention numerous instances of reductions to the Minister. I am not going to say that the Minister deliberately wanted to mislead us, but the Minister must have known that that additional £20,000 has been brought about not by increased grants, but that it was intended for the fresh applications which have been received.

It is the same thing as they have been trying to do in connection with the Land Bank.

Yes, the hon. member for Jeppe (Mrs. Bertha Solomon) said that we were getting up here every day and pleading for the young fellows from the platteland to be given an opportunity of obtaining technical education, and now that the Government was providing those opportunities the children from the platteland were refusing to avail themselves of those opportunities. What he did not say was that those young fellows who had come from the platteland and also from the towns had entered into a contract with the Department of Labour to work as apprentices at a certain wage for six months, and that after that they were to haye been given employment at 2s. 9d. per hour. What happened? The work was available for them, but they were first of all to sign the red oath. It is perfectly true that that condition only came in afterwards. The hon. member further said that they would not be compelled to go North, and that they would not be compelled to do military service either. They would only have to be there if they should be called upon from time to time. Not one of them has been called up yet. I have had a case of a young fellow who told his mother that he would be put out of his work if he did not take the red oath. His father gave his consent, but the next day he did not go to Voortrekkerhoogte, he was sent to Ladysmith to be trained to go North. The Government should distinguish. Let those who want to go and do military duty do so, but let the others who don’t want to go be given those jobs. It is their business if they want to take the oath. The hon. member also complained that the Government had not introduced a Bill providing for third party risk. Judging from her speech, it would appear that the Government cannot do the two things at the same time, it cannot introduce the Bill and at the same time wage war, and because she regards third party risk insurance as being of more importance she apparently wants the Government first of all to make peace so as to pass that Bill. She says that it is more important, because third party risk has accounted for 2,000 lives in the one year, while only 17 people were killed in the war during that year. I have before stated that the members of the Labour Party may as well say good-bye to their party, because they are not going to get back here. We are going to have a new order. Kennedy, the American Ambassador in England, in a Press interview for instance, said this—

When they put further questions to him he replied—

The question was put to him: What was the meaning of the British Labour Party supporting the Government? His answer was—

I want to tell the Minister of Labour that we expect him as a man who has stood for high ideals in the past, we expect him as the man who has told us what he is going to do when he gets into power, as the man who has told us that he will help the under dog, and that he will see to it that the workers get a minimum wage of 10s. per day—we expect him to stand by his promises. The eyes of the public outside are not closed. They see everything that is going on, and when they get the opportunity they will show what they think of him.

I would like to take this opportunity to make a plea to the Government, and particularly to the Minister of Agriculture, to associate themselves with other powers, Great Britain and Belgium, in research work in connection with the red locust in Central Africa. For some years past there has been a steady and efficient research by scientists in regard to the visitation of the red locust, and this research has not been interrupted by the war, inasmuch as Great Britain and Belgium are carrying on these investigations at the present time. The research to which I refer does not concern the brown locust, which has its natural breeding places in the Karoo and in South-West Africa. Thanks to the work that is being done in this country through measures of locust destruction, the brown locust is no longer the menace that it was, not only to the Union but to adjoining territories, which have cause to be grateful to the pioneer work, the very successful work which has been done by the Union in this connection. It is in regard to the red locust, which the then Union Minister of Agriculture as long ago as 1934 described as the real menace that this research work is going on. This type of locust periodically invades this country, as well as adjoining territories including Angola, the Congo, the various Protectorates, Tanganyika, Rhodesia and Nyassaland. It has for many years been the considered view of scientific experts and leading entomologists in England and elsewhere, that the permanent breeding places of the red locust are comparatively few and small. In the light of research and experiment on the spot it is believed that the individual red locusts there can be controlled and combated before they get to the stage when they start to swarm and to move off to start a cycle of fresh invasions, such as we have been only too familiar with in the last eight years or so. These entomologists may be right, or they may be wrong, but my plea to-night is that they should, so far as our Government is concerned, be given a chance to be proved right or wrong. My plea, sir, is for this country also to take its proper share in the spending of a very modest sum of money. It is computed that an annual cost of £4,000 is all that is required for this research. At the best, sir, that research may result in the saving of millions, while at the worst it can hardly fail to make available a great deal of valuable information regarding the habits of this particular type of locust, and the best ways of dealing with it. The history of the research into Nagana affords a rather hopeful parallel. As the result of years of investigation on the spot, through one investigator and the discoveries made by him, a trap was perfected as a result of which that particular menace has been largely removed, or minimised. There is likewise every reason to hope that as the result of the researches being carried out in the North and in Tanganyika, similar success may be achieved. During ten years of research what has been the Union Government’s record? It has been, if I may say so, a record of promises rather than performance, and what appears to be a rather short-sighted and half-hearted endorsement of this research. As long ago as 1934, our then Minister of Agriculture took the lead at an inter-State locust conference convened in this country, and the Minister expressed himself very strongly in favour of this type of co-operation. According to the official report of the conference he referred to the alarming proportion which the locust problem had assumed in most of the southern States of Africa, and said—

And then, after referring to the success with which the Union had dealt with the brown locust, he went on to refer to what he termed the real menace, namely, the red locust. He goes on to say—

And the conference adopted certain resolutions, one of which included the following—

That was in 1934, and since then there were a number of other inter-State conferences held to record the progress of investigation and research, with details of which I shall not weary the House. I shall only refer to two subsequent meetings, one at Cairo in 1936, and the other at Brussels in 1938. At the former it was pointed out that research had by that time clearly established that the two main outbreak centres for the red locusts were situated in comparatively small grass land areas, the one in Northern Rhodesia and the other in Tanganyika, and the conference recorded:

As a result, steps were taken to provide for an International Convention so that all parties concerned could co-operate.

That knowledge is as old as the hills.

That may be, but the Union has failed to take advantage of these opportunities and to associate itself as fully with the project as the cause deserves. Then to complete the picture, in 1938, a Convention was entered into only by Great Britain and Belgium, and this country did not see fit at that stage to associate itself with the scheme. Since then, apart from the fact that the Union Government has sent two entomologists up for a period of time to assist in the researches which have taken place in Tanganyika and Northern Rhodesia, we have not done anything else. And now, within the last few weeks, Great Britain has decided to release from his military duties and to send him out again for special duty there Mr. Michelmore, the acknowledged expert, who has for years been in charge of these investigations, and to carry on as far as possible the scheme which had been evolved at the Brussels Conference of 1938. And, so far as Belgium is concerned, in spite of the difficulties consequent upon the war situation and the occupation of the country, they are still carrying on in a somewhat informal way on their side. My appeal is for the Union to offer to associate herself with the other Powers in keeping this investigation going and in preventing the results of what has so far been done from being interrupted by present conditions. The arguments in favour of carrying on at this stage are numerous. I have already indicated that the cost is trifling, and, looked at merely from a business point of view, as an insurance, as a possible way of getting very valuable data, the incurring of a few thousand pounds involved—it would in all probability only be a couple of thousand pounds annually—would be well worth while. Then, apart from that, I submit that there is on the Union, as the chief African State, more vitally interested in this question than any other, an obligation to give a lead in regard to this aspect of locust policy. I do express the hope that the Government will see fit to re-open the question and decide now to approach the other governments concerned, and see whether the particular researches cannot be further speeded up. There was just one other small point in connection with the question of locust policy which I would like to bring to the notice of the Minister of Agriculture and ask what the Department are doing about it. That concerns the experiments which were made in the northern part of my constituency not very long ago with a substitute for the locust poison or locust bait now in use. The exact name of the substitute I do not know, but it is commonly referred to as yellow powder. I understand that for the last few years the Government have made extensive tests with this yellow powder, which possesses the advantage over the other remedies that it is not poisonous and has no deleterious effect on stock. Both in Zululand and the Karroo, I understand, the tests referred to were carried out by officers of the Department. It seems to me that if a substitute of this sort could be proved efficacious, and were procurable in sufficient quantities, it would have a big advantage over the methods of locust destruction now in use, because it could be applied by a dusting from aeroplanes over the flying locusts before they have time to lay their eggs, instead of, as we do now, destroy the hoppers with ground bait. I would like to know what the position is in regard to this eminently promising substitute, and to know whether the Government intends to persevere in the tests with this yellow powder, and so add another string to its bow of dealing with what we hope is a diminishing evil.

There are a few points which I should like to deal with. The hon. member for Rosettenville (Mr. Howarth) made an insinuation against the hon. member for Potgietersrust (the Rev. S. W. Naudé), and I am sorry that the hon. member was allowed to get up in this House and make a false statement.

The hon. member must not say that another member has made a false statement.

Let me say then that he made an unfounded statement. I should like the hon. member when making a statement like that to have the courage to repeat that statement outside the House, because I can state that the hon. member for Potgietersrust never did anything of the kind. The hon. member also made an insinuation against the hon. member for Mossel Bay (Dr. van Nierop). Let me say that the hon. member for Mossel Bay never said that the soldiers should be carried in goods trains or in trucks. He never said anything of the kind. The right hon. the Prime Minister told us that the farmers were highly satisfied with their conditions, but let me tell him that of course his information was entirely incorrect. I cannot blame him. No doubt our Minister of Agriculture gave him that information. Now let me look into the question of whether the farmers really approve of what the Government has done. Let us, for instance, take the wool farmers. The Government knows very well, and the Minister of Agriculture knows very well that we have a wool growers’ organisation named “The National Association of Wool Growers.” At their congress in Port Elizabeth some time ago they asked the Government for an open market in addition to the British scheme, and they asked the Government if possible to raise the basis of 10.75d. The National Association of Wool Growers, consisting of about 20,000 members, went further and confirmed that resolution, but they never suggested anything else except an open market and a higher basis than 10.75d. The congress naturally realised that 10.75d. was less than the price at which the farmers could economically produce, but what happened? The wool farmers shortly afterwards called a congress in order to discuss the question of the Smith patent in connection with the combating of the blowfly. The Agricultural Union at that time also called the farmers together in order to discuss farming conditions. But now what happened? Like a cloud from the blue the department came along to discuss wool questions with the Agricultural Union and to come to a decision on wool questions. The Agricultural Union is comprised of various sections of the agricultural industry which have nothing to do with wool and which have no right whatsoever to deal with any matters affecting the National Association of Wool Growers. And there the Government came along, and with the aid of people who do not produce one bale of wool, passed a resolution to the effect that they were prepared to enter into a contract with England on the same basis as Australia—this meant the basis of 10.5d. or 30 per cent. more than the pre-war price. Now let me say that the Wool Association and the Wool Council and all the members of the House were given to understand by the Minister that the wool farmers would now get a price of 10.75d. I want to challenge the Minister to prove that a scheme providing for 10.75d. was ever agreed to, or that any contract was ever entered into with England on a 70.75d. basis. I asked the Minister of Agriculture to be present here this evening, but it seems to me that he does not think it worth while being here. In any case that is the way in which they say that the farmers voted for that scheme. It is an absolute distortion of fact. Let me tell him that the British Government bought our wool on a totally different basis, under a scheme which has nothing at all to do with the scheme which the British Government had entered into with the Australian Government. The British Government buys our wool in 235 types; what right has the Government to-day to say that wool is being sold on the basis of 10.75d.? Our wool farmers want to know where the guarantee is for the wool farmers? When we were here last certain brokers sent me a telegram. I went to the department, I did nothing behind their backs. I asked the Secretary for Agriculture where the guarantee was for that 10.75d. He told me that it would be better for me to keep quiet as the basis would be a good deal higher than 10.75d. I kept quiet to see whether that would be so. Afterwards I, in my capacity as Chairman of the Wool Growers Association, investigated the matter. What did I find then? That we were not going to get anything like 10.75d. We feel that the Government created the impression among the wool farmers that there was a contract under which they would get 30% more than the pre-war prices, and as there is going to be a shortage I think we can expect the Government to make it up to the farmers. But what is this 10.75d., if it is going to be 10.75d.? It is below the cost of production. There are many ways in which the Government could have kept an open market going. If the British Government was unwilling to allow the open market to continue I still say that we have a Government which can make millions of pounds available for the war, and that being so our Government could at least have made the same contract with the farmers as the British Government made. One of the excuses is this “lie and rot” story. Another excuse is “Who is going to carry the wool?” I was at East London on the 22nd October, and what did I see there? I saw a large Japanese cargo ship of approximately 10,000 tons which had come to fetch wool from East London. At the end of October another two ships came from Japan to fetch wool, so the British Government in our own ports is selling our wool to Japan at a considerable profit. What did we hear from America over the wireless? They tell us that part of the wool—I cannot say how much—is being bought by the American Government from England at 24d. per lb. I can quite understand that the British Government needs it. The £ has depreciated considerably and they want value to exchange for ammunition, but why should the wool farmers of South Africa have to pay for it? Why should the wool farmers in our country be taxed, be doubly taxed to see England’s war through? Our Minister of Agriculture may be a good friend but he has never yet looked after the interest of the farmer. He thinks of only one thing, and that is how the farmers are going to pay for England’s war. We say that every penny the wool farmers are able to get should go into their own pockets. Now they come along with their old story that we are going to get part of the profit. We do not know how long the war is going to last, nor do we know whether Great Britain will be able to stand up when the war is over and whether or not we shall then be able to get our share of the profit. That is something which the future will have to show. Hon. members opposite are talking very big now, but I do not think any of us can say what is going to happen. The whole of the scheme is a miserable scheme which has been carried out so as to make the wool farmers pay for England’s war, and that is what our Minister of Agriculture has been helping to achieve. I hold him responsible for the fact that there is no guarantee in regard to this 10.75d. It is his fault and nobody elses. It is not the fault of the farmers, as he is trying to pretend But I want to ask the Minister what he has done to protect the farmers so far as the scour yield of their wool is concerned. I was in Australia a few years ago and I found out there that the scour yield of our wool is always under-estimated in the country. We thereupon made an enquiry and found that our wool, so far as the scour yield is concerned, is always under-estimated by up to 10%. Let us see what that means to South Africa so far as its wool clip is concerned. 2% means 12/- to a bale, 4% means 24/-, or nearly £1,000,000, which is the amount lost to the wool farmers by the under estimation of the wool. Under the scheme which we now have, certain tests have been made and those tests show that in a few instances with the heavier types of wool there is an over estimate, but in regard to 80% or 90% there is an under estimate of up to 11½%. I ask the Minister whether he has done anything to protect the farmers in connection with that under estimate and whether he is prepared to do anything in that respect whether he is prepared to put up a place at each port where the wool can be tested so that the farmers may put that £1,000,000 into their own pockets so that it will not be lost. A few other remarks were made here by hon. members who know nothing about agriculture, for instance by the hon. member who spoke this afternoon, the hon. member for Pretoria Central (Mr. Pocock). I do not think he really knows what farming is—I do not know whether he has ever seen a decent rooster or a bull. All his interest is in the wholesale trade. Mr. Hirsch deals with him and he deals with Mr. Hirsch. That is all he knows of the condition of the farming industry. I want to ask him whether he has ever been in touch with farmers’ organisations. Never in all his life. The whole business is a lot of intrigue among big interests against the farmer. And then we get the hon. member for Kimberley District (Mr. Steytler). He comes here and tells us how well the farmers are doing. He has been telling us that the people on the platteland this year are getting more than last year. What nonsense. And are those the front benchers opposite? Are those the people who plead on behalf of the farmers? The hon. member for Kimberley District should know better; he is misleading the people, just as the Minister has mislead them in regard to the 10.75d. basis. But what do we get further? We get another agricultural expert opposite, namely, the hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Blackwell). He tells us about farmers paying off their bonds, and that is the type of man on the other side of the House who talks about farming interests. But has the Minister, has the Prime Minister, ever taken any notice of the resolutions passed at the congresses of the S.A. Agricultural Union? Hon. members will be surprised to know where it comes from. Of all places it comes from Natal. There are some members from Natal who have been telling us about the flourishing position of the farmers, but what does their Agricultural Union have to say about that? The Agricultural Union states that the farmers are in a miserable condition. There is one member opposite whom I wish to congratulate on his having had the courage to tell the Government what the position is, and that is the hon. member for Weenen (Mr. Abrahamson). The pity of it is that he did not vote on our side. He is the only man opposite who is in touch with the farmers. What did the Natal Agricultural Union plead for. The very thing which we have been asking for here, namely that the relief measures should be extended (relief measures like the interest subsidy, etc.), because failing that the farmers find it impossible to carry on. That suggestion was passed unanimously by the S.A. Aricultural Union. Now I ask the Minister whether the S.A. Agricultural Union is not the mouthpiece of the farmers. The Government likes to tell us that the farmers have accepted the 10.75d. basis. The farmers have never yet accepted it. The Minister tells us that they have accepted it, but the position of the farmers is extremely precarious and the National Association of Woolgrowers has never yet accepted that basis. Then there is another member too. What does he know about sheep? I am referring to the hon. member for Ermelo (Mr. Jackson). He stated that we were buying ewes, and he mentioned my name. What did I buy them for? I bought lambs from 6 to 8 months old for 8/- to 10/-. Those are the wonderful prices which those people get because of the wonderful prices they are getting for their wool. Why do the poor people sell their lambs? They sell their lambs so that they may be able to pay the interest on their bonds. They have nothing else. They have no full-grown sheep to sell and now they have to sell the lambs to enable them to pay their bonds, and yet hon. members opposite say that the farmers are doing so well. I am sorry to have to attack the Minister of Agriculture, but I repeat what I recently said that his politics are like those of the dung beetle—he works backwards. The wool farmers can expect about £2,000,000 less this year than last year. They are not going to get the 10.75d. basis, they are going to get £2,000,000 less than last year, yet the prices the farmers have to pay for their requirements are going up daily. Fencing wire is 100 per cent. more expensive, some things are 200 per cent. more expensive, shears are 50 per cent. more expensive. Everything has gone up but their revenue has come down by £2,000,000. This Minister of ours is crawling backwards. The farmers’ revenue is going down and his expenses are going up. That is all I can say about him; that is all the Government is doing, making the farmer pay to carry on the war. But why do I say that? The prices of the farmers’ products have been fixed on the basis of pre-war prices. And that applies to the farmer only. Why? In order to keep down the costs of living in the towns and to enable the capitalists and the mine magnates to give cheaper food to their people. And then they talk of a 4.5 per cent. increase in the cost of living. I am sorry to say that we get professors and doctors in our country who work out schemes, but our farmers are beginning to doubt those people a bit; our farmers know in actual practice what their costs are and what the price is which they have to pay. The cost of living has not gone up by just 4.5 per cent. but by 15 per cent. and 20 per cent. and more than that.

The hon. member must not anticipate a motion which is on the Order Paper.

I am not speaking about the rehabilitation of farmers, I am only speaking of the neglect of the Government.

The hon. member may do so but he must not go too deeply into motions which other members are still going to introduce. I want to draw the hon. member’s attention to a motion appearing on the order paper in connection with the costs of production.

Yes, Mr. Speaker, I am aware of that. It is a motion in connection with rehabilitation of farmers, but I am now criticising the Government for not having done its duty. I want to go further and I want to tell the Minister why the prices cannot go up to 10.75d. I wrote to the Department telling them that there was a great anomaly in regard to the different types of wool. There are 235 types. The first one is fine wool, a very fine wool of over 70 quality and it is estimated at 32d. But what happens to the second type, also of 70 spinning quality. That goes down to 28½d. The one is spinning wool and the other top makers wool, and the difference is 2d. on the scour yield. Before the war there was a difference of ½d. The 2d. difference is defintely to the advantage of the woolbuyers and not of the wool farmers. I asked that a class in between the two should be fixed. Why should the farmers because of a few bits of seed in their wool get so much less? The difference between the spinning type and the topmaker’s type is too large. Not sufficient interest is taken in these things and people do not know enough about it. That is why these things are going on. I hope the Minister will in regard to the next clip put in a type between the spinning type and the topmakers type by which the farmers and not the buyers will be benefited. I discussed the question of the 10.75d. agreement with British wool-buyers and they said: “Do not talk nonsense, there never was an agreement of a 10.75d. basis.” Why then should the Minister give us the impression that there is such a thing, and that it is 30 per cent. higher than the pre-war prices? Let us see, however, whether the farmers would really benefit by a 10.75 basis. A year before the war the then Minister of Finance, Mr. Havenga, stated that the price of 8.5d. was to low, and he promised a subsidy. That subsidy would have been 25 per cent. and that would have brought us to 10.75d. What was that based on? On a £ sterling of 15/-. But the 10.75d. to-day is based on a £ sterling of 6/8. The purchasing power of 10.75d. is not as great to-day as the purchasing power of 8.5d. was before the war. Why then must we be grateful? We now have to help cover Great Britain’s war expenditure, and £5,000,000 per year which we would have got as wool farmers is taken out of our pockets. The Minister and his Department are responsible for the loss to our wool farmers of about £5,000,000 per year. I only want to tell him that if he thinks that the platteland does not realise the fact he is making a big mistake. The Minister of Labour made certain statements here and he told us that the wages of the labourers had gone up. Now I should like to know from the Minister whether the wages of the people working on soil erosion works has ever been put up? They are still on the 5/6 per day which they have always been on, and that 5/6 has already depreciated by 30 percent, so that in actual fact they are getting less than they got before the war. But let us work out this 10.75d. in terms of gold. What does one get then? Based on gold it is not even 4d. or it is less than we got when we were on the gold standard. The purchasing power of 10.75d. is no more than what 4d. was in those days. The Minister, of course, will come along and try to argue it away, but that is the truth. Then I want to ask the Minister this: for eighteen months we have been doing our utmost to get certain legislation passed in regard to wool. Although 20,000 wool farmers asked for it, nothing has as yet been done. The farmers’ money is being used to wage war. Now I want to ask whether it is the Marketing Board which has brought its influence to bear on the Minister not to get that legislation passed? The Minister is doing nothing for the farmers; he is causing the farmers to go backwards, instead of helping them to progress.

[Inaudible.]

I am very sorry that I must tell the Minister that that is not so. That is again the old “lie and rot” story which we have heard from the Minister. There are parts of South Africa where the farmers are suffering great hardships, or where they have practically no money. Go to the shopkeepers on the platteland, to the hotels, etc., and they will tell you what the position is. They will tell you that the farmer is going under as a result of the attitude adopted by the Minister and his Government. And then the Minister tries to take refuge behind the hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Blackwell). Let me tell the Minister that the farmer who has had a Land Bank loan has always paid off his debt to the Land Bank. There is nothing wonderful in the fact that the farmer is paying off now. But what about this Farmers’ Relief Board, and what about farmers who have bought land since 1934? What is the position of those people? Their position is extremely precarious, and the South African Agricultural Union has told the Minister how deplorable the position is which is prevailing to-day. Can the Minister go against the South African Agricultural Union which is telling him how serious the position of the people is? No, in not one solitary case has there been any relief. Everything has been curtailed; the erosion works have been curtailed, and we are struggling to get some suggestions from the Minister to assist us to cope with the silting up of the dams. The Minister of Lands, who is a practical farmer, has realised that it is essential for assistance to be given to farmers whose dams are silting up. He has awakened the Minister, and they are now going to do something in that direction. So far as land settlement is concerned, I do not want to blame the Minister, because I want to pay him a tribute and to say that he has not driven any people off the land in my constituency, although I have been told that that has happened in other parts.

Then it is an exception.

I hope that the Minister and the House will not attach credence to all the stories which are being told about the flourishing position of the farmers. Take the dairy farmers. They are getting 6d. per gallon for their milk, but 1d. has to go for costs of transport, so that they only get 5d. They get just as little as they got before the war, but everything they buy is so much more expensive than it was before the war. The hon. member for Griqualand (Mr. Gilson) told us last session how well the dairy farmers were doing. Not all are fortunate enough to be able to sell their milk for 7d. per gallon to Nestles. There are thousands of other dairy farmers who have to come out on 5d. How can a farmer come out on 5d., when we take into account the increased cost of living and the higher prices that have to be paid for everything? This Minister of Agriculture has not brought anything but sorrow and misery to the farmers of South Africa since the outbreak of war. He has never yet helped the farmers, and there is nothing in all the nice talk of hon. members opposite—they do not know what they are talking about.

Of course, you know everything.

That hon. member is a capitalist; he is a man with a lot of money, and he buys up the property of farmers who are in trouble. He fattens the stock he buys, and then he makes a big profit on it. I would not have said that if he had not interrupted me. It is all very fine for the capitalist.

Tell us something about those 1,000 ewes.

That hon. member can think of only one thing; if he were to listen to what happens here, he would have known that I have already made a statement on that. He is a good old friend of mine, but if he pokes his nose into matters he must expect to get his nose punched. There are members opposite who agree with what I have been saying here, but they have not got the courage to go to the Minister and tell him the truth. They are told—they have only one object in view; let the farmer pay for the war, let the farmer suffer hardships, and let us see this war of Haile Selassie through. Then we have some members opposite who get a double salary. If those members go to the platteland they will see the sorrow and misery which the small farmer has to suffer. That small farmer is never going to forgive them. Justice will yet be done to him, and he will teach the big capitalists and the Minister of Agriculture a lesson which will cost them a lot as a result of the unjust treatment which their side is meting out to the farmer.

While I have been in this House, Mr. Speaker, I have been very careful indeed never to attack members of this House because their opinions differ from mine. There are very good reasons for that. In any democratic country every man has a right to his own opinion, and also the right to express it. Another point is that I might possibly be wrong and the other gentleman right, although that, of course, is not so very probable. On the other hand, to administer poison is not necessarily to be a criminous poisoner, it can be done by accident, and a person may put out a very poisonous doctrine and still be a very nice and amiable man. All the same, the priviliges of free men do not include the right to speak slanderously or harmfully and untruly of others, and therefore I am bound to refer very plainly indeed to the speech made in this debate by the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman). I do not attach the same importance to that speech that he obviously attaches to it himself, but I do wish and I have the right to remind this House that for 40 minutes he stood up and vilified, if not deliberately, he vilified the hon. Minister of Labour. I do not know what good he expected he was going personally to derive from that, or what advantage he was going to bring to the party to which he is momentarily attached. But I do suggest this quite strongly, that in those groundless, slanderous statements that he made, he made very grave inroads into his own reputation. Possibly, sir, we cannot expect too much from one whom I honestly believe to have said in public, while our country of South Africa is at war, that the best thing that could happen would be for Germany to win. That is precisely the same thing as saying that our own country should lose. It has been suggested to me that he has not yet denied it —I am sorry he is not in his place to-night— possibly he will deny it to me to-morrow or some other time. But I am afraid, as a matter of fact, that the denial will not be forthcoming. Then when this attack was ended, sir, and the hon. Minister defended himself, and these baseless and unsupported charges fell to the earth like a pack of cards, the hon. member took refuge in the fact that his statements were “according to his information!” According to his absolutely unverified information, according to information which he had not taken any sort of trouble apparently to check. In his speech there was no suggestion that what he said was unverified, that his accusations were tentative. He made his charges as direct statements. [Interruptions.] Now, Mr. Speaker, if I may be allowed to continue, I will put facts before you, and you are capable of putting two and two together. Some of the interrupting gentlemen may not be in that position. It does not matter in what baby words you put what may be called an adult thought, it cannot be understood by an infant of one year, which is the mental age of some of the members opposite. I want to read to you the cooing dove terms in which the hon. member for Fordsburg spoke two years ago in his budget speech on the 27th March, 1939. The capitalists were apparently then in good standing, and the Minister of Railways was the workman’s best, if not their only friend; he was well nigh a Father Christmas, not to put too fine a point on it. After an attack upon a worshipful member who now occupies a front bench on the other side of the House, the hon. member for Fordsburg said—

Then he goes on—

That is also from that bad old capitalist Government—

He then proceeds to give them.

May I remind the hon. member that we are not now discussing the Railway Appropriation.

Very well, sir, I won’t read, any more. You can all read it for yourselves, because I will give you the page and the chapter. The column is 2403 in Volume 33 of the debates, March, 1939. Anyhow, the speech goes on from unction to unction, until it ends with soft soap ineffable. The only addition I can suggest is that he should have ended: “Yours very humbly, Uriah Heap.” And now, Mr. Speaker, not only myself but many others have been assailed on this side because, being socialists, we have the temerity to sit here. To be perfectly frank, I sit here for one purpose only.

To make your salary.

I will gladly go halves with the hon. member, sir, with all I make out of the country. I am on this side of the House for the same reason that hon. members on the opposite side would be here if they had a rag of intellect between them, and that is to support this Government in the prosecution and the winning of this war, because if we lose the war we lose everything. I sit here sometimes not the most comfortable and happy man in the world, because quite frankly I do not approve of everything that this Government does, any more than I approve of many actions of you over there. But this particular capitalist Government is doing the thing that first and most needs doing, and I am with them until that is done. What difference does it make to me what hon. members over there think? We shall win for you as well as for ourselves. I want to say just this. I and others have been assailed as a socialist, with the charge that I am here for what I can get out of it. I am not that sort of socialist at all. It is a matter of origin, to some extent, what we are and what we say, too. As a matter of fact, my father and grandfather and great-grandfather, as far back as we can count, were all conservatives and capitalists of the very worst type, but I did not happen to be blind, and that is why I joined the Labour Party. I saw the absolutely disgraceful exploitation of the weak by the strong, and I joined the Labour Party to help to stop it. I may have taken the wrong turning, as a famous literary character did, but I did it in good faith, and I have not made money out of it. Let me tell hon. members, and they can believe it or not. My governor, just before he died, told me that I lost a legacy of £8,000 through this colonial “free-and-easines,” as he called it. This was lost for a principle, although for me it was a lot of money. I once ingathered, altogether by my own exertions, a little bit, perhaps as much as £4,000, working through the night till the sun came up. I spent it as I went on my work. I am defending myself against the charge that I am drawing two salaries, a charge which should never have been brought. Do I get two salaries? I don’t get one. I will tell you this. I could have had more than the price of the salaries I am supposed to be getting by keeping out of politics, and out of this place, and I sometimes wonder why I came. Let me say this about my salary. It costs a very great sum of money, and I have not got any, a great sum of money, this privilege of coming here. I had to borrow every penny of it, and I am paying it back little by little and bit by bit. Now listen to this, let hon. members hear this, those who talk about my earning my salary. I do earn it, and I earn it honestly and fairly.

Everybody else does.

One hopes so. [Interruptions.] I don’t know whose speech this is, Mr. Speaker, but I really did think it was mine. The amount I receive from this place I maintain that I earn, and the amount I receive for other work other people maintain that I earn. It is not £4,000 a year, as some members opposite make extra to their parliamentary fees. If anyone would like to see my balance sheet, I will lay it open for inspection. After such study, I do not think the hon. members concerned will be very proud of their jeers. But if they are, they are very welcome to their point of view. Now I want to say a word or two about a State bank and the present banking system of the world. Let us see what the banking system of the world has produced to-day, and not shut our eyes to facts. We have a very complicated, expensive, and supposed to be life-giving monetary system and banking system, and one of the results it has not been able to prevent is this, that we have either 300,000 or 400,000 poor whites in South Africa, and millions of still poorer browns and blacks; and under the present wondrous banking system, in all the countries in the world there are hundreds of millions of people to-night who are hungry and who will be hungry still tomorrow. There is an odd tendency to look upon anything that exists in our day, any sort of institution which was here when we were born, as being here for ever. It was here, it is here, and therefore must be here for evermore. How many people realise how modern the present banking system is, and how that system originated, and understand that there were beans and beer in England before the time of banks and Beaverbrooks. It is as long ago as 1066 since the Jews came to England and lent the King (William the Conqueror) money. They went on doing it for a long time, until at last they were supplemented by the wealthy goldsmiths from Lombardy, who in the thirteenth century came to London and settled down in Lombard Street. There they used to hold people’s money on a 6 per cent. basis. Then, as the merchants got richer, there was so much of their stuff in hand, that they used to keep it in the Tower of London to avoid losses by theft, until King Charles I, who later on lost his head, in 1640 appropriated £200,000 that had been lodged in that fortress. The merchants then thought that some form of safe deposit was necessary, and somewhere about 1694 the idea of a Bank of England, in a sort of way, came into existence, in a very small and humble way. It was not until 1844 that the Bank of England started under the charter that it has to-day, and this terrific ramp that is called big business began to be thoroughly organised. I am only going to advance in favour of a State bank one very great moral reason, and I submit this, that had each of the great countries now fighting in Europe had its State bank, there would not have been a war to-day. The state of Germany in 1918, at the end of that year, was hopeless and helpless. She had no minerals, no metals, no acids, no materials in prospect except what they could buy if they could borrow money. Now the great banking corporations did not lend money to the farmers of Germany, or even to the millers; they lent it where they could get the biggest dividends, the biggest profits. They lent it to the munition firms, they made the profits, and the whole world got the hell that has come upon us to-day. I suggest deliberately, Mr. Speaker, that had there been State banks in Britain, France and Germany in 1918 and 1919, this present war would never have come, because the people would have lent their money to constructive and not destructive organisations, for life and not death, for peace and not war. I have well-nigh finished, but I want to illustrate that point in one way. England is a very small country with a very big population indeed. She has very rich soil and abundant rainfall. When we think of the plight of our farmers in this country, with the tiny South African market, and the huge distances to shift the stuff across, we can see they are beaten before they start. We are sorry for them, and we would help them if we could. There is no comparison between the difficulties of the farmer in this country and the farmer in England. Here we must struggle for markets. There, fifty million customers wait at the farmer’s door. Yet in England you cannot farm to-day at a profit because of the operations of big business. I had a letter only a few days ago from a friend who runs a very successful poultry farm, but she only just manages to get a living. She can only do that by taking the eggs herself to the customers, and cutting out all the merchandise business in between. She sells the eggs at the doors of people’s houses, and do you know why? Because even the egg industry has been capitalised, industrialised and generalised in Great Britain. They have what they call an egg king, and he brings hundreds of millions of eggs from Japan, and the British hens lay in vain. How do you like that? Banking interests stand in support of the monopolist. He is enabled to scoop the pool, at the expense of hundreds of others who are thereby prevented from making a livelihood. This is but one example of a very widespread evil. Big business knows neither flag, nor boundaries, nor patriotism; that is the truth of the matter. I appeal, before I sit down, to the farmers of our country. I say that a State Bank is going to be your salvation. I say that you know how hard it is to borrow money when you want it—never mind all the facilities one hears about. You know how hard it is to market your crop—if you are lucky enough to have produced any. A State Bank would say to you; “Grow everything you can—animal, grain or anything, we shall buy everything from you at a fair price.” Does not that appeal to you? Do the commercial banks go out of their way to help you? The State Bank can be set up and be of the utmost assistance to you. The idea is in no sense an impractical or visionary one, and you know yourselves that this is true. The State Bank can bring new and general prosperity to our land. Why, then should it not be allowed to come into existence?

The Right Hon. the Prime Minister stated at the beginning of this session that there were a few sections of the population which were benefiting from the war. When we declared war on the 4th September the Minister of Agriculture stated that he wanted to take part in the war in order to help the farmers as otherwise the farmers’ products would lie and rot in the country. Now I want to tell the Prime Minister, and also the Minister of Agriculture, that in my constituency where the farmers are principally mealie farmers they so far have had nothing for which they can be grateful. I want to ask the Minister of Agriculture if he should reply to the debate, to tell us in what respect the mealie farmers have benefited in any way from the war? Can he give us any facts to show that the mealie farmers are better off to-day than they were before the war and that they are getting more than they got before the war? Are the prices which the mealie farmers got in the first year of the war better than the prices they got before the war; or is it a fact that even in the first year of the war their mealies are lying and rotting there? I also want to ask him whether the prices which the farmers are going to get for their mealies this year will show an improvement on last year’s prices? If we take into account the way in which the costs of production for mealies have gone up since the outbreak of the war, and if we compare those with today’s prices, we find that the mealie farmers are hardly getting the production costs of their mealies. The Minister will tell us again that the subsidy system is still in force. We admit that and we are grateful for it. We are grateful for everything that is to our benefit, but I want to ask the Minister whether the mealie farmers have so far had one pennyworth of advantage out of the war? The Minister of Agriculture told us that he wanted to take part in the war so that the products should not lie there and rot. The position to-day is that the price of artificial fertiliser has gone up, phosphates have gone up by 100 per cent. All agricultural requisites have gone up in price; goods like fencing wire and other things have gone up. They have gone up to such an extent that farmers can hardly pay for them, but in spite of this the price of mealies continues to be low. I want to say at once that I do not like excessively high prices, because I quite realise that in time of war it is essential for prices to be controlled, but in any case prices should be fair and reasonable, so that the man who produces is at least able to show a profit on his production. Furthermore, we should remember that we should allow a certain amount of play so that the farmer who produces will at least have some compensation for the depression which has to come, and which will come after the war. We all realise that a depression will follow the war, and for that reason prices should be of such a nature that the farmers will get compensation for the losses which they will have to suffer after the war. I believe that the Minister of Agriculture is aware of the fact that the mealie farmers have not benefited from the declaration of war. He is now advising the farmers to plant less mealies and to go in for Soya Beans. I do not know how far the Minister has got with that but he should bear in mind the fact that some parts of this country may not be suitable for the production of Soya Beans. The question arises in my mind whether the time has not arrived for something else to be done with our mealies. Is not this the time for petrol factories to be established so that our mealies can be used for the production of petrol? That would help to develop our country in industrial respects, and in that way we should be able to dispose of large quantities of our mealies, mealies which are to-day sold abroad at 5/- per bag. Possibly petrol which to-day is imported into this country, and other articles as well, could be manufactured here. I think the Government should give this matter its serious attention. The mealie farmers have to get better prices for their mealies; they cannot carry on in the way they are doing now and some solution has to be found. Failing that I am afraid the whole of the mealie industry will collapse. There are some other points I wish to refer to, and one is in regard to the discipline among our soldiers. I am sorry that I have to add something to what has already been said, because this matter has been fairly fully discussed, but I must say that we have reached a stage when our soldiers have become a burden to us. There is no discipline among them, and I, who have spent a great deal of my life in military service, have come to the conclusion that the fault must rest more with the officers than with the soldiers. We find that the soldiers to-day do not show any respect for their officers. There is no discipline. I am convinced that the cause of all the irregularities has to be looked for with the officers owing to the fact that they have no control over the soldiers. There is no discipline, and they themselves are in most cases the people who incite the soldiers. If one travels by train to-day one finds that the soldiers and officers are all mixed up and the soldiers have absolutely no respect for their officers, nor do the officers worry themselves about the soldiers, and the soldiers carry on as they please. I must say that our soldiers can take an example from the English and Canadian troops who are in Cape Town at the moment; they are courteous and their demeanour compares very favourably with that of our soldiers. When we were travelling up last time after the session of Parliament something happened on the train which astonished me. I heard a terrible noise somewhere close by and a lot of shouting and a noise as if people were kicking at a door, and so on. I opened my door and asked what was going on. And they called cut “We want Strydom.” It appeared then that they were trying to kick open the door of the compartment in which the hon. member for Waterberg (Mr. J. G. Strydom) was. There was an officer standing close by. Imagine, an officer was standing close by and in his presence soldiers were doing things like that! He did not deign to say a word or to stop them. Well, that is what one gets from the soldiers to-day. If one goes into a dining saloon on the train one finds a very undesirable state of affairs there. A decent person can hardly go and have his meals there. They set the whole train going and there is a noise and a fuss wherever one goes. I am sorry the Prime Minister is not here, but I thought I should bring this matter to his notice as he is the commander-in-chief of the Union troops, so that he may see to it that a certain degree of discipline is introduced among the soldiers. As the Prime Minister has such a large force in this country, just as large a force is the Union as outside, I would suggest that he should send the soldiers who do not behave themselves here up North, and that the police who have been sent up North should be sent back to maintain order in the country.

The hon. member for Lichtenburg (Mr. A. P. Swart) also spoke again about mealies and about using mealies for other purposes. May I give him a little information on the subject which I have made a study of. The hon. member speaks about the manufacture of petrol from mealies. May I draw his attention to the fact that one cannot manufacture petrol out of mealies, but one can manufacture alcohol, and the alcohol can be mixed with petrol.

I know that.

Very well, but I want to tell the hon. member further that that will not solve the problem of surplus mealies, because with about 2,000,000 bags of mealies one can produce all the alcohol required to mix with petrol, and one would then have enough fuel to cover the whole of the petrol consumption in the country; more alcohol one would not be able to mix, because it is done in a proportion of 80% petrol and 20% alcohol, more or less. So that would be no solution. I also wish to draw the attention, however, to the economic side of the matter. If alcohol is produced from mealies and one mixes it with petrol it considerably increases the cost as compared with to-day’s cost; that is to say, the cost of petrol. Is that what the farmers want? The farmers to-day use petrol, not only for transportation purposes, but also in their business. Now the question arises whether the hon. member wants us to produce petrol in this country at a cost much higher than that at which we can obtain petrol to-day.

Petrol may in the near future become very much more expensive and very much more scarce.

In any case we shall be able to produce petrol very much more cheaply from coal. For that reason I say that it is wrong to tell the public that the Government is neglecting to undertake a solution of the mealie problem in the way hon. members opposite have suggested.

A large amount of money is obtained from the petrol tax.

That does not affect my argument. The point is that even with the tax petrol is landed here at a price much lower than we would be able to manufacture it. Would the farmers be in favour of that suggestion? Apart from that fact we should only be able to use a small proportion of the over production of mealies.

You cannot only produce alcohol out of mealies, but many other by-products, such as dry ice.

Yes, but I am speaking about alcohol now. Dry ice can be produced more cheaply as a by-product of coal. There are other by-products …

Maizena, for instance.

I am now speaking about other by-products. These are the facts. Will hon. members still be in favour, after considering the matter, of the manufacture of petrol out of mealies? Would they advise their friends to invest their money in a factory for the manufacture of alcohol from mealies and the use of that alcohol to mix with petrol, if it is quite uneconomic? How would they establish such a factory? Would the Government have to give a subsidy? Do they want to keep industries going by means of subsidies? Then I want to ask them to what extent a subsidy will have to be given. Do not hon. members care how large the subsidy has to be, so long as the State pays it?

What about sugar?

So far as the sugar industry is concerned there are thousands of farmers making a living out of it.

And the mealie industry.

The mealie industry also gets a subsidy, but if a subsidy is given directly or indirectly, and petrol is manufactured in an uneconomic way—will that be a sound position? I want to tell hon. members that they must not try and establish industries by way of subsidies. It may be possible for a start but if the future existence of an industry is to depend on a subsidy it is going to put the industries in the position in which the agricultural industry has already got, namely, that they will be kept going artificially. At some time or other such an industry must collapse.

What is the difference between a protection and a subsidy?

If someone gets protection by the aid of the Customs Tariff, it has to be done in one of two ways. Protection is then granted to prevent the important article from killing the local industry, and a price is laid down for the local industry so that the article shall not be sold at a higher price. All one does then is to prevent the importation of such an article. But what does one get if one gives a subsidy? The money comes out of the Exchequer then. But I want to go further, and I want to tell the hon. member that if he thinks that one can go on and on starting factories and industries by giving them protection, one will continually be sending up the cost of living, and one is going to create a vicious circle.

Just as we are doing with boots and shoes.

I say that it is bad to keep industries going by artificial means. As soon as one starts granting protection by means of tariffs, one never knows when those tariffs can be taken away, and one eventually lands in a position whereby those industries are kept going by artificial means. The day must come when there will be a depression, and there may not be sufficient money available to keep those industries going artificially, and there may be a collapse. The hon. member for George (Mr. Werth) again spoke about woollen factories. He also said: “Why cannot the Government establish a woollen industry, and by doing so save the position for the wool farmers?” In other words, the wool farmers can then be paid any price for their wool, and they will have a good market for their wool. I say again that if we establish factories or industries, we must set about things carefully. We must not allow things to run away with us, and we must not for political purposes establish anything that is unsound. One can establish industries and factories in two ways. There is nothing to prevent hon. members opposite from forming a company and from establishing a factory. Why do not they do so? When, for instance, a factory has to be established to manufacture woollen products, what can a factory like that produce? Do hon. members want us to manufacture cloth from our wool for the purpose of making clothes? Do hon. members know that thousands of kinds of cloth are manufactured? What is the consumption in this country so far as clothes are concerned? Our consumption is far too small, and would perhaps be less than 50 per cent. of the production of such a factory. The demand will be too small. Our own market is too small. Would hon. members advise their friends to invest their money in an industry which they know to be unsound? For that reason I say that to tell the farmers that the solution lies in the establishment of woollen factories is misleading. Do hon. members know that blanket factories, for instance, do not use merino wool? They use Afrikaner sheep wool. It is too expensive to use merino wool, and such a factory could not exist. It is quite easy to talk about the establishment of a woollen factory, but if hon. members make an investigation they will find that it would be uneconomical to do so, and if we should try to keep such a factory alive by means of tariff protection, the price of clothes would go up. Is that what hon. members want?

The prices are going up, none the less

What is there that does not go up in time of war?

The farmers’ products.

I want to say this, that our participation in the war is to the benefit of the farmers. Hon. members must be reasonable. If we had not taken part in the war, where would we have found a market for our goods?

We would have been able to use this £60,000,000 in the interest of the farmers.

Would we have got shipping space from England if we had remained neutral and had adopted a hostile attitude?

Who would have suffered more damage if that had been the position, England or we?

Yes, on that point we shall never agree. We are convinced that if we had not taken part the position of the farmers and the position of the country would have been worse than it is to-day. Ireland is suffering to-day

Does England refuse to buy Ireland’s sucking pigs to-day?

The hon. member knows quite well that Ireland to-day is in trouble as a result of having remained neutral. Could we expect England to have looked after our interests if we had remained neutral?

Why does England not buy from us while she does but in neutral countries?

We are now talking about indsutries. The hon. member for George spoke about key industries and he said that a key industry was an industry which had to absorb the over production of the country for the manufacture of certain articles. Is the hon. member who is a sensible business man going to advise people to establish factories which do not produce for war purposes? Is this the time to establish other indsutries? First of all he will have to pay three or four times more than he would in ordinary times for the machinery for such an industry. Secondly, it would be very doubtful whether he would be able to get the necessary machinery. Would the hon. member put his money into an industry if he would have to pay three or four times as much for the machinery as he ordinarily would have to pay, while furthermore there would be no certainty as to whether he would be able to get the machinery at all? Or would it be better to wait with the establishment of such industries until after the war when the required machinery will cost a great deal less? Surely a good business man is not going to invest his money in a factory which he knows to be uneconomic and uncertain? In times of war the only industries which can be successfully established are industries producing things required for the war.

And which will disappear again after the war.

An intelligent business man will equip his industry in such a way that it can carry on after the war is over. And that is the direction in which the Government is operating to-day. They expand, but the industries are of such a nature that they can carry on after the war for other purposes. The object is to establish industries in which people will be able to find work after the war. This Government has established the Industrial Corporation and I can give hon. members the assurance that even now, through the assistance of that Corporation, negotiations are proceeding with other countries, with England and America, so that under that policy of the Government’s industries will be brought into being immediately after the war with the object of absorbing all the workers in sound industries. But hon. members must not lose sight of the fact that they are creating the impression among the public that the Government will be the deliberate cause of people being unemployed after the war. To do that is unfair. We must set about things on a sound basis, and that is what the Government is doing. We have the opportunity now of determing through the Industrial Corporation whether an industry which is brought into being with the aid of the Corporation will be sound or otherwise. We do not want to establish any unsound industries. Surely hon. members opposite are not going to ask their people to invest money in industries which offer serious risks and which are not safe. If hon. members talk so glibly about industries they should go carefully into matters. We have reports from the Board of Trade and Industries giving full particulars in regard to the potentialities of woollen factories, pertol factories, etc. I should advise hon. members to read those reports, and if they read those reports and they find fault with the techinical advice contained therein, they can raise the matters here and deal with them. But they should not go and create the impression on the platteland that the Government is neglecting the establishment of factories which are economically possible. The hon. member for George also said something else I want to deal with, something in connection with the war. I do not want to go into the question now as to whether we should or should not have gone into this war, but when he says that the expenditure incurred must be kept within the scope of the Defence Act, and must be incurred within the Union itself, then I want to ask him this: once having decided that we are going to take part in the war is it not better to let the military authorities decide where and what is the best way of our fighting the enemy. The hon. member will be the first to agree with me that the military experts are in the best position to tell us where we have to go to defeat the enemy, whether we must go and defeat him in the North, or whether we have to wait until he comes to our own borders. As we have declared war, and as we are acting in accordance with the terms of the Defence Act of the Union, it still remains the task of our military experts to tell us where we must go and defeat the enemy, and we here in Parliament are the very last to blame the military experts for the decisions taken by them as to where we should go to defeat the enemy. Hon. members talk so glibly here about war expenditure caused by our participation in the war. If we had remained neutral, where would the hon. member have stopped with our expenditure under the Defence Act so as to put South Africa into a condition in which it would have been able to defend itself? Where would he have stopped?

At least we would not have paid double salaries.

Which double salaries?

Which members opposite are getting.

The few members who get an allowance? It really appears that the great trouble is not that the present Government is engaged in a war and is spending money on that war, but that some members on this side of the House are paid allowances for doing military services. Why should we talk about that? Are there no members on that side of the House, too, who are in receipt of other Government pay?

Those are trivialities. Let us discuss the question of the war like grown-up men, and do not let us keep worrying our heads about trivialities. If hon. members over there are unable to tell me where they would have stopped spending money in connection with the war, even if they had remained neutral, then I say that the only way we could have economised would have been by not spending anything on the war. And if that is the point at issue between us, then it will have to remain the point of issue between us and members opposite us, then it is no use our talking about it. We are going to spend money on this war so as to bring the war to a successful conclusion. They do not want to do so. If we are wrong, then it is for the people to decide, and say so. But so long as we are carrying out our policy, the people should not be told that we are wasting that money, but that we are spending that money in order to carry out our policy. Money that is spent in order to give effect to a declared policy cannot be called waste of money. Then I want to point out to hon. members that the invective which is used in respect of our troops and the contentious manner in which our troops are referred to does not redound to the honour of this country. I can only repeat what I have said in this House on previous occasions, and that is that invective used by members opposite towards members on this side of the House, and by members on this side of the House to members opposite, constitutes a reflection on our joint ancestors, and on our history as Afrikaners in this country. I ask again if we have to deal with these matters why we cannot discuss them on their merits without abusing each other and calling each other names.

What sort of invective are you talking about?

To make me out as a terrible Imperialist or as a khaki knight, or as something else that is bad. That sort of language towards each other is unbecoming to us as Afrikaners. I can plead my cause without reviling anybody else. We are divided on principle on the war question, and when we talk about the war and try to call each other names we are doing something which ill becomes us, and which reflects on all of us. When we are spending money on the war and hon. members opposite criticise such expenditure, then they should definitely tell us where they would have stopped their expenditure if we had remained neutral. Would they have prepared South Africa for a possible attack, or would they have sat still and done nothing at all? When we put that question to members opposite, they often retort by asking us: “But who would have attacked us?” Do hon. members over there want to tell me that the reason why Italy attacked Greece would not also have applied to South Africa? Should we have allowed Italy to have come here and to have found us totally unarmed and unprepared? The hon. member for Lichtenburg (Mr. A. P. Swart) is a military man. Would he have said to his commando “I said that we should have remained unarmed, and now Italy is going to attack us, and we should do nothing to defend ourselves because we are not armed.”

We did not talk about arming.

The hon. member should realise that he is sitting over there as a representative of the Transvaal, and he is now hiding behind the hon. member for Waterberg (Mr. J. G. Strydom), who says that we declared war on Germany, and that that is the reason why we are at war, and even if the Italians should come here he would not move a hand to defend South Africa. He is your leader, and you have to follow that policy, or you must leave that party over there.

He did not say that.

The hon. member will not deny it. The hon. member for Waterberg is an honest man. I know him, and I know that he is an honest man. I blame him for that conception, and I certainly do not agree with him. I say that even if we differ on the question of war against Germany, when Italy declared war the position so far as South Africa was concerned took oh a totally different aspect. Italy is practically next to us in Africa, and after Italy had declared war, if hon. members still ask who could have attacked South Africa, I say that just as Italy attacked Greece so she could also have attacked South Africa. South Africa would be a much more valuable asset to Italy than Greece. Hon. members opposite were opposed to the declaration of war against Germany. If they made a mistake at that time, it is all the more reason why to-day they should agree with us, even if it is only because Italy has become our enemy in this war.

After the last war you warned us against America.

I do not know anything about that. I do not know that we were ever warned against America, but I have nothing to do with that. I am dealing with the position as it is to-day, and I say that if hon. members opposite tell me that we need not arm ourselves in this country because England will drive Italy out of Abyssinia, then I cannot associate myself with that attitude. If I in South Africa have to follow a policy of hiding behind the skirts of another nation, and that a nation which I look upon with contempt—as hon. members opposite do—and against which I would take steps to undermine it—then I as an Afrikaner would feel ashamed of myself. If I have to take refuge behind another nation under those conditions, then I certainly would not speak of love for my own country.

The hon. member, who has just sat down, came along again with the old worn-out argument which the Imperialists of the past have always used in South Africa, and that is to put up imaginary enemies for South Africa, and then to ask us why we are not prepared to take part in the dreams they see of enemies who are going to attack South Africa. The great difference between hon. members over there and us on this side of the House is, as they pretend, that we do not want to defend South Africa under any circumstances. No, that is not the difference. The real difference between members opposite and members on this side of the House is that members on this side are prepared to defend South Africa if South Africa is attacked, but they are not willing to go and make enemies wherever it be, either in the North, in Italy, in America or in Japan, and then to go arid fight them, not in the interest of South Africa but in the interest of Great Britain. The hon. member said that we had to prove where those tremendous items of expenditure were being incurred in the country which were not necessary. If the hon. member were not to confine his attention to his own constituency and to Cape Town, but if he were to move about the country a little he would very soon find out where thousands and even millions of pounds are being wasted, as this side of the House has so often told the Government. He wants to hide away and tell us that we keep on nagging about trivialities such as the double salaries drawn by certain hon. members opposite. No, we mention that as one of the instances which constitute an indication to us of how South Africa’s participation in the war against the will of the people has led to certain people in South Africa being placed in a position where they make additional money, and that it is not always the people who should be given those opportunities who are now benefiting in the way they are doing. The hon. member spoke about an allowance for military service. I am quite convinced that we on this side of the House will not begrudge hon. members opposite their additional salary if they go and do military service, but it is because they do not go that we object. One of them came to the town where I come from. He was one of the leaders of the khaki circus, and he led it so badly that some of the lorries were capsized and a number of people landed in hospital—and that without any enemy being near. A great many of those people are not entitled to the salary they are getting. I can mention another case of a man who comes from somewhere near my town. He is in military service and he rushed a crowd of unarmed internees with a lorry-load of soldiers armed with bayonets and rifles, in order to shut their mouths so that they should not ventilate their grievances. For that heroic effort of his he was given an increase of pay. For that act of heroism in fighting unarmed men his pay was increased from £30 to £80 per month. That is the sort of expenditure which we are referring to. I want to draw the hon. member’s attention to another incident which happened in my constituency. When the internment camp was started there they went along and bought the requirements not only for the internees but also for the soldiers from the settlers. They bought beef at 4¼d. per lb. for shoulders, and 4½d. for hind quarters. This went on from the 24th August until the 27th November. By that time the settlers had sold all they had. The farmers in the neighbourhood had no more cattle to sell. Then the Department went along and bought meat from a certain butcher’s business in Kimberley, and from the 27th November till this date they have been paying 6d. all round. Now I want to ask the hon. member whether he does not agree that this is a terrible waste of money and an instance of favouritism being shown to certain interests.

Did you report it?

I do not know whether that hon. member has had any experience of reporting things during this war. We reported the Minister of Agriculture to the people of South Africa during the last session; we challenged him but what was the use of it? He sits here and laughs. I make this prophesy, and the hon. member will see it—I prophesy that the Minister of Agriculture is not going to answer this allegation which we have made, that he has misled the wool farmers of South Africa in a scandalous manner.

It is not worth while answering that.

Of course not, because Ouma England might take exception to it.

That is nonsense.

I say that the Minister will not answer it. The Minister made an announcement over the wireless and he also made one in this House that the wool farmers would this season get 10¾d. per lb. for their clip, and he knew that it was not so; he knew that there was no such agreement.

I personally discussed this matter with members of the British Wool Commission and they also told me that there was no such thing, no agreement of that kind. South Africa’s wool is bought on the basis of the various types, and on the clean yield of the wool. Now I wonder whether hon. members opposite know what the position on the wool market has been so far. During the first few days when the best light wools came on to the market the price basis was 9.2d. per lb., and that went up to 9.8d. After that it went down to 9.3d. That was for the best and the lightest wools. If we make our calculations on the basis of those values then the South African wool clip at the end of the season will fetch an average price of round about 10¾d. We asked the Minister, and we ask him again: Get up and tell the people of South Africa whether it is an actual fact that the wool farmers of South Africa are going to get 10¾d. and if it is not 10¾d. the Minister must tell us why he made that statement to the people over the wireless, and also to this House. We deny it and we say that there is no such agreement. Not only is it a fact that the British Wool Commission has also told us that there is no such agreement, but we also find that our brokers in the country state that there is no such agreement. So one side must be wrong. All the other interests, the farmers and the people who have an interest in the wool trade must be wrong, or otherwise the Minister must be wrong. I take it that the wool trade as such and the British Wool Commission as experts on the question of wool are not wrong. I would sooner take their word than that of the Minister who is not an expert so far as wool is concerned. I would sooner take it that the Minister is wrong in this particular respect, and that brings us back to the question why the present Minister of Agriculture entered into this agreement with Great Britain. To use the Minister’s own words, the facts are staring us in the face. To my mind it is the best evidence of the fact that the present Minister of Agriculture together with his Government are the greatest satellites of British Imperialism South Africa has ever seen. Here they go and tell us that we are getting 30 per cent. more for our wool than we did last season. As I have said before these things have no vestige of truth in them, because they are not based on facts. The Minister cannot prove it, and we accuse him for the umpteenth time of having sacrificed the interests of the people of South Africa, and the interests of the wool farmers, in order to help pay for this war of Great Britain’s because it is not a war of South Africa. If that is not so then we ask the Minister to controvert this allegation. And I shall tell you why the Minister has done these things. It is perfectly simple. I have a report here in my hand which I received from an English broker dealing with the previous wool season, when we in South Africa were paid good prices, and when members opposite, like the hon. member for Kimberley District (Mr. Steytler) said that we owed those good prices to the scheme which we had last season. If anyone studies this wool report of this English broker he will see that even this report, though perhaps it is not anxious to make the position clear to the public, admits that the price basis in South Africa in that season was higher than that which the British Wool Commission is now paying, or than what the scheme price was in South Africa during the previous wool season. He adds, however, that the English buyers had to compete on the South African market because we know that the woollen factories require certain types of wool. Bradford requires certain types of South African wool and had to compete on our market. They were unable to get that wool at the agreement price and they had to pay the world price in South Africa on account of the open market which we had, and that price was from 2d. to 3d. per lb. higher than Great Britain was prepared to pay. Why did die Minister deprive the farmer of that price which he was getting? Simply because the wool farmers of Australia and New Zealand who are the largest producers were agitating against that scheme. They had already been linked to the British scheme by their Governments even before our Government had gone as far as that, and when we in South Africa obtained that higher price they were dissatisfied, and in order to keep Australia and New Zealand quiet the interests of the wool farmers in South Africa had to be sacrificed so as to satisfy the farmers in those countries. The Minister went along and entered into that agreement, and then members opposite come and say to us: “But who would have bought our wool if we had not entered into that scheme?” We are going to answer that question—the self same people who in the world war of 1914 to 1918 bought the South African wool clip. In those days Japan, England and America bought on our market. All three of those buyers could have been on our market this year. And what is happening now? To-day those people, America and Japan, are also buying South African wool because they need it. They require certain South African types of wool, but they are not buying that wool on the open market, they are buying it from Great Britain; but they are not buying it from Great Britain at Bradford, but here in our own ports. What do they pay for that wool? The British Control scheme allows of a tremendous profit being made on that wool as compared with the price which England pays in South Africa. We know that South African wool is being used to create British credits in America, on the basis of 24d. per lb., while we are told that we are getting 10¾d. and we do not even get that. Japan buys the wool in our ports and buys it through the middleman, England. That is the information which we obtained from the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. Bekker) who told this house that tons and tons of wool are being shipped to Japan. Who gets the profit? The hon. member for Kimberley District stated here that when the war was over the South African wool farmers would get a fat cheque because the wool farmers would get half of the profit. We want to know why the wool farmer has to be content with half the profit? But what is that profit going to be? Look at the expense which is being incurred. I have made it known in this House that all the telegrams and telephone calls of the British Wool Commission, and the expense in connection with the British Wool Commission, are debited against the wool. The wool farmer of South Africa has to pay for it. I also said that it was found in Port Eilizabeth that the person “drawing” the samples, the man opening up the bales, and pulling out the wool—a type of work for which no technical training is required, the only requirement being that the man must know how to handle a knife—that that person gets a salary of £50 per month. He is paid that salary out of the pockets of the wool farmer, and we can imagine what the profits are going to be after the war. Now I ask is that not the reason why the wool farmer of South Africa is not allowed to know what is really going on behind the scenes? Is not that the reason why the Government has taken the step of disallowing the publication of statistics in regard to the export of, and the price that is paid for our wool? Is that not the reason? What information could that give to the enemy, and why should not the wool farmer and the people of South Africa as such know how many thousands of bales of wool are being shipped? If that is not the reason why they are withholding those facts from the wool farmer and from the people of South Africa, the reason may perhaps be that that wool cannot be shipped. The Minister of Agriculture got up in this House and told us that we must take part in the war because otherwise our products would lie and rot. Figuratively speaking, we find that our wool really lies here and rots. How many bales are being shipped, and is the Minister perhaps ashamed to tell us what the position is? I want to ask the Minist er again why the wool farmers are not allowed to know how much wool is being exported, and what the price is? No, I say that the Minister of Agriculture stands here accused first of all of having misled the wool farmers, and, secondly, he is accused of preventing the wool farmers from getting that information. And then we find that the Minister made an interjection just now, during the speech of the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. Bekker), and stated that it was perfectly true that things were well with the farmers. I was astounded, and it made me wonder in which parts of the country the Minister is in touch with the farmers. I can assure him that in my constituency the farmers are not able to pay off their mortgages. And I am going to tell him what does happen, and that is that we have been applying in vain on behalf of the farmers to get money for the purchase of farms. For some reason or other applications of that kind are always turned down. The general feeling on the platteland is that it is no use making application for any kind of Government support, because all the money is wanted to help in the war, to help Great Britain win the war. The Minister is so keen on telling us that that is the story which we spread, but what do the representatives of the farmers and their organisations say? That brings me back to the price of wool. I believe the hon. member for Cradock has shown clearly who the people are who have decided on this so-called price of 10¾d. per lb., but I want to say this, the farmers of South Africa are tired of these kinds of farmers’ organisations which are filled up with political agents. That is the reason why we find that the great majority of the farmers no longer attend any farmers’ organisation meetings; they know it is useless doing so. Take a man like Mr. Mannie Wium, we know he is recognised throughout the country as one of the greatest supporters of the Government. Yet that man, who only last year occupied the position of chairman of the South African Agricultural Union, tells us that the position of the farmer is precarious. I call him in testimony of what I have said about the position of the farmer. Even the Minister himself has told us that he represents farmers. He is a man who is right in the forefront of things, because he is chairman of the South African Agricultural Union, and in the presence of the Minister of Agriculture he stated at the Bloemfontein Congress of the Agricultural Union, speaking about the general position of the farmers, that the farmer’s position to-day was such that it was more difficult for him to meet his commitments than before the war. Did the Minister contradict him? Did he say to him “No, you are wrong, the farmer’s position is sound; they are paying off their bonds,” as he tried to make this House believe? The Minister was in touch with the farmers themselves there, and he knew that if he had spoken on that occasion about the good position in which the farmers found themselves they would personally have mentioned instances to him to prove how the position had deteriorated. As Mr. Mannie Wium said there, wool prices are controlled, but the price of the goods which the farmer needs, which the sheep farmer needs, goods such as windmills, wires and poles—the prices of all his requirements have gone up very much higher. Mr. Wium made that statement there, and the Minister of Agriculture was present and did not contradict it. On the contrary, the Minister made a speech at that same congress, and he did not on that occasion say what he is saying here to-day. He did not state there that the position of the farmers was rosy, but what he did say was that this was war time, and that we could not expect an abnormal rise in price to take place because England, which was the greatest buyer of South Africa’s products, had fixed prices in England. I again ask why the Minister did not at once tell the representatives of the farmers there that things were going so well with them? No doubt he is now going to tell us that the wool farmers can be satisfied with 10¾d. I want to be reasonable, and say “Very well, if the wool farmers can be assured of 10¾d. per lb. all through, and if then the prices of the goods which they have to buy are relatively fixed in accordance with the price of wool, then the wool farmer of South Africa will be satisfied.” But what is happening now? The Minister knows what has happened. He remembers that since the last depression in 1933 the wool farmers have been steadily going back, their position has been deteriorating, and now that the time has come for them to make up a bit of leeway, to make up for what they have lost in the past, they are deprived of the opportunity of doing so. But what is worse is that the farmers, now that they have a chance of preparing themselves for the difficult times ahead, are not allowed to do so. We know that after the war is over the farmers in South Africa and throughout the world will be faced with a serious depression, perhaps more serious than they have ever known before. What, then, is going to be the position of the wool farmer in South Africa? I do not believe the Minister of Agriculture will still be there, but if he is still there in his capacity as Minister he will shrug his shoulders, and say that it is the result of world conditions. Well, it will not be the result of world conditions, but it will be the result of the weak-kneed policy of the Minister of Agriculture so far as the farmers are concerned. It will all be due to that. When we get to the wool position we find that one of the greatest scandals has been perpetrated in that connection. The Minister now wants the wool farmers to be inspanned to help in seeing the war through. Now I again want to put a question to the Minister which I put to him during the last session but which he did not reply to. The hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. Bekker) raised that matter again to-day, and I again put the position pertinently to the Minister—I put it to him that we say that the basis of 10¾d. does not exist, there is no such thing. Our wool is being sold in 235 different types and on the scour yield. The Minister and his Department may perhaps come along with the story that that will work out better than 10¾d. but the Minister did not have the slightest ground for giving the wool farmer that assurance. Let the Minister be man enough to admit that there is no such agreement. If there actually is such an agreement the Minister should not be allowed to sit still when we make these charges, but he should get up and produce the evidence. If not, the people of South Africa and the farmers in particular will settle with the Minister.

I am prompted to join in this debate on account of the irresponsible attacks that have been made on the Minister of Agriculture by members opposite. Wherever I have been in this country I have not met a dissatisfied wool farmer. The only dissatisfied wool farmers are the members opposite, and they now tell us that the scheme of 1939 was a good one and yet a number of these people condemned it then and said that they only received 7d. per lb. for their wool. The hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. Bekker) condemned that scheme.

What are you driving at?

I am driving at this, that the hon. member for Kuruman (Mr. Olivier) also intimated that the scheme under the open market was a good one, and we all know that this present scheme which we wanted to have is a far superior one because it gives much higher prices on an average than the scheme of 1939.

Nonsense, you know nothing about it.

The hon. member himself knows it and I can quote dozens of farmers who have had higher average prices than they had in 1939. The hon. member for Kuruman mentioned light wool selling at 7d. and 9d. whereas he must know that wool in Albany fetched over 21d. per lb. and that was a higher price than received in 1939. The hon. member said that business was dead as the dodo and the Minister of Agriculture was responsible for it. He quite forgot the £2,000,000 of new money which the citrus industry brought into the country last year. The citrus farmers received a clear profit of 5s. 6d. per case, a price unknown to them for many years. He mentioned milk. He knows that the Minister has tabled a motion to amend the Marketing Act, so as to improve the position of the milk farmers. He also knows that as regards cheese milk it is not so easy to fix a satisfactory price for farmers, when one has to estimate the losses on exported cheese. Just now we have not exported any cheese because of our military consumption, but this Government will see that the farmers who sold cheese milk will be recompensed as regards their losses. The hon. member for Cradock accused the hon. member for Newcastle (Mr. Nel) of profiteering out of fattening cattle bought from poor farmers, and in the same breath he said that he had bought fine lambs at 8/- per head and he also mentioned the misery and the sorrow of the farming community.

He must have stolen those sheep at 8/-.

It looks like it. I do not know what he sold them at, or what he got for the wool, but he may inform us one day about the excellent profits he made out of those poor farmers and we hope that he recompenses them out of his profit, the same as the British Government is going to pay us part of the profits which she will make out of our wool. But it is typical of those hon. members; they strive to keep their seats by causing dissatisfaction. It gives them a thrill to inaccurately speak about 400,000 poor whites in this country. But the day will come when their followers will be disillusioned. Members opposite have attacked our war policy and they are making capital out of it in the country, but I think we would have been in parleous position, after September 4th, if the resolution they voted for had been carried. It was not entirely a motion of neutrality as they pretend, but also a motion to maintan the Simonstown Agreement to fulfil our obligations to the other members of the Commonwealth of Nations. No, if that motion had been carried we would have been in a most humiliating position—impoverished, unarmed and threatened by our enemies, and I say that the prosperity brought to the farmers of this country is due to this Government’s policy. I am sorry the hon. member for Cradock is going out because I have a lot to say about his criticism of the Minister. His verbosity undoubtedly seems to have made an impression on the National Wool Growers Association, but the farmers of South Africa will appreciate that the South African Agricultural Union rectified that misapprehension and gave the Government the true feelings of the farmers. The hon. member for Cradock must know that the mohair farmers are clamouring for a similar agreement to that which the wool growers have, and they are very jealous of the wool growers, and they claim that wool should not receive preference over mohair. I have several letters from mohair growers clamouring for a British purchasing scheme, who also tell me that the prices they are receiving are not too bad. Mohair is sold in the open market, and fortunately America needs our limited supply. One gets tired of this “lê en vrot” story. We heard some time ago that our wool was lying all round in the harbours. And now we are told—and we are very pleased to hear it—that quantities of our wool are sold to America and Japan at tremendous profits. Well, the farmers will expect a share, and we trust that the figures which the members opposite have given us are correct, and that they will not raise hopes which may fall to the ground, like the many misleading ones which they have raised in the hearts of their people. I should like to say how sad one feels for the future of this country on account of the policy of members opposite. They try to gain power by preaching and creating dissatisfaction in this country, but they know that on the 4th September, 1939, they did not vote for a strictly neutrality motion, and yet they endeavour to keep their young men from participating in this war. It is this thing, and the attitude of hon. members over there, which will bring about dissension and misery to this country for perhaps hundreds of years, and which will cause hatred of children to parents and those who have misled them, which I am sorry to say will have an influence on coming generations. It is one of the saddest things I can think of, that now when our very existence is threatened, when our liberty is threatened, when our democratic Government which has been handed down to us by our forefathers through many generations is threatened, that members opposite strive to sacrifice those liberties by causing dissension among the population of the country. Referring back to wool, I want to say that hundreds of wool farmers have stated openly that the stabalisation of wool prices was something which they had wished for for years; it will stabilise agriculture; it will help to remove the burdens of those heavy bonds on our farms. Farmers will be able to budget for their incomes and many farmers have said that they wished this agreement could be extended not for one year but for five years after the war. They are very glad to feel that a great manufacturing country like Great Britain has taken upon itself the responsibility of stabilising our wool market. We have had many speeches before the war from the hon. member for Cradock about the parlous position of wool and the danger of the synthetic litre. He said then that we were only receiving an average of 8½d. per lb. for our wool which was below what farmers could produce it at, and now though some farmers in this country are receiving an average of 12d. and 13d. for their wool …

That is not true.

I can prove it. I can prove it outside this House, if the hon. member will then come inside and admit that he was wrong.

It is not so, the average price is 10¾d.

These prices in spite of the hundreds of varieties which members opposite have spoken about, are based by experts on an average of 10¾d. per lb. I often wonder what causes this great dissatisfaction in the hearts of some of those hon. members opposite. I know the hon. member for Cradock is a wool farmer. I wonder what has made him so bitter. I have heard interjections in this House about Blow Fly. I wonder if there is something wrong with his sheep — has Blow Fly got in among them? Are his sheep ravished by Blow Fly, and is most of his wool dead wool? I feel there must be some substantial argument somewhere behind his bitterness. That is the only reason I can think of for the hon. member’s dissatisfaction. Or is it possible that he has been so engrossed in political life that he has neglected his own farming efforts so that his wool to-day is mostly dead wool? Well, it is very likely. It is possible that his prospects are as dead as a Dodo and that he has tried to rehabilitate himself by buying sheep at 8/- from the poor. The hon. member also spoke of our exchange. Well, I am very loath to even mention exchange. I think there are very few of us who have any authority to speak on sterling values and exchange. I can only speak on the practical side. The hon. member for Cradock said that our sovereign was only worth 6/8. Yet we all know that the purchasing power of our sovereign is practically the same as it was before the war. Where he gets the 6/8 from goodness only knows. Well, Mr. Speaker, I think I have made out my case in support of the Minister. I am sorry the hon. member for Kuruman also joined wholeheartedly in this attack. I know the Minister will before the end of this debate give certain figures which will completely prove the incorrectness of the hon. member’s arguments. I feel that it is disgraceful that members opposite should make these attacks on a Minister of the Government without their being able to substantiate them. I think that sort of thing is wicked, but it is only in keeping with their policy of creating distrust in this country, so as to try and bring themselves into power some day. But theirs is wishful thinking. There is too much common sense in this country to allow a party like theirs to ever come into power, especially if it banks on coming into power through creating dissatisfaction and discontent.

The hon. member for Vereeniging (Lt.-Col. Rood) made a remark to-day which must have struck us, in any case it struck me. It was in connection with the training of our young people for trades and he told us that numbers of young men are being trained at the present moment in connection with war service, men who, after the war, will be tradesmen, and can take their place in the big industries which will be developed in South Africa. I want to welcome this scheme he has referred to, but there is ons thing which must give food for thought to anybody who thinks about these matters, and this is a matter which once more I want to bring to the attention of the Minister of Finance. What after all is the use of training our boys if we have no markets for the products which will be manufactured? The war destroys valuable and precious lives, it destroys human forces, it destroys human happiness, it destroys production. This production which is being destroyed by the war, running into millions and millions, has to be paid for. The £10,000,000, £20,000,000, £60,000,000, £100,000,000, £200,000,000 will have to be earned in addition to the ordinary income of the country. The people of this country will have to earn these millions. How is South Africa going to earn these millions of pounds? On a previous occasion I tried to draw the Minister’s attention to the necessity of taking steps without delay to create opportunities to earn these millions. Is that being done? In these Estimates we find that millions and millions are being spent on destruction in this war, but what is done to create these opportunities I have referred to? Let us see what is happening. I find an amount here, an amount of £1,000 for the Belgium Congo. No, I beg your pardon, it is £1,088. Is that all for these big developments up North? We all welcomed the statement that our interests in the North should be extended. We must look to the North for a future for our children, and in order to earn the extra millions which have to be earned. Yet we only get an amount of £1,088. What is it leading to? When the war is over are we going to get any opportunities in the North? Has the Minister ever given any serious thought to these matters? What do we find? The countries, the large countries which have completed their organisation, will step in and South Africa will have to look on, and we are doing nothing at this stage to create openings for ourselves. South African blood is flowing, so we are told, because we want to open up the North. Whom are we going to open the North for? A short while ago I read a report about the activities of the representatives of England in the Congo. I read that report in a Congo paper Le Courier d’Afrique—that paper is a few weeks old—and it is there stated that Lord Haley was conducting negotiations with Mr. Rykmans, apparently the Governor General of the Belgium Congo, in regard to the matters which I have just touched upon. Not on our behalf but on England’s behalf, and the result of those negotiations according to the report was that a trade agreement had been arrived at not between South Africa and the Congo but between England and the Congo which, inter alia, lays it down that England will buy all sorts of things from the Congo, which the Congo is able to supply and for which there is no market at the moment, and of course—naturally, England, for the goods it buys will supply other goods. England will take the Congo Market and where are we?

At 10.55 p.m., the business under consideration was interrupted by Mr. Speaker in accordance with Standing Order No. 26 (1), and the debate was adjourned; to be resumed on 14th February.