The Press Tuesday, June 23, 1925. Prohibition and Politics.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18415, 23 June 1925, Page 8

The Press Tuesday, June 23, 1925. Prohibition and Politics.

A message from Auckland which we print to-day will ■ remind- tho public that the Prohibition movement is still a disturbing and undesirable faetor in the politics of the Dominion. To a majority of the. electors the prime political need of the country is the consolidation of the moderate forces so that the problems of the future' may be faced fairly and squarely with everyone on. his proper side in the conflicts which those problems arc certain to arouse. But to the ardent workers for Prohibition, who have made large investments of self-interest or ambition or reputation in the Prohibition movement, the great complex of national problems which our Parliaments exist to deal with is of not the slightest importance. Their desire is not for the Parliament which will most effectively and most sanely legislate to keep the i Dominion moving along the path of stable progress, but for the Parliament which will carry the Dominion most quickly along the path into which America was misled. What they most value in a candidate for Parliament is not brains or a sober and judicial temper, but a willingness to work for Prohibition. They have been circularising members of the present Parliament, and, according to the Auckland telegram we have mentioned, they have been told by 3VIr Savage, one of the Auckland Labour members, that he will not pledge himself to anything but the Labour* programme. Mr Savage is fortunate in being able thus to refuse to give any kind of undertaking to the New Zealand Alliance and to do so without running any greater risk than the risk- of being blacklisted by the most extreme fanatics amongst the drys. The politicians of other Parties, however, cannot take refuge within the palisade of a rigid party doctrine, and must answer the Alliance's questionnaire, if they answer it at all, as individuals bound by no kind of pledge or other instrument of party discipline. There can hardly be any question as to • the attitude which a politician both sincere and clear-sighted will adopt. He will tell the Alliance that it is the duty of a member of Parliament to keep public qitcstions in perspective, and that Prohibition is only one of the manj issues and an issue of comparatively minor importance. If, in addition to sincerity and clearsightedness, his virtues include a readiness to talk plainly to importunate bigots, he will add that his duty compels him to take any opportunity that offers to express his dislike of sectional questionnaires and of their authors. He may incur the hostility of the fanatical wing of tho Prohibition Party, but he will win the sympathy and support of far more than his honest speech will antagonise, for a majority of the electors (and that majority will include many who will vote Prohibition) will fully understand that Parliaments are elected for other and more important purposes than the regulation of the people's liquid diet. The average elector is not a student of political principles, but no great political erudition is necessary to an understanding of the impossibility of securing a Parliament broadly representative of public feeling on the main issues with which Parliaments are concerned if sectional fads and fanaticisms of auy kind are allowed to influence the machinery of popular government. Questionnaires of all kinds should be discouraged by all honest politicians, and in tho present case the method of discouragement which we have here recommended ought to be easy. For almost anyone can see, at tho present stage of tho Dominion's political development, that those who are thinking of Prohibition only, caring nothing for the cardinal issue dividing the electors, have a very lop-sided, unnatural and unhealthy outlook.