LABORATORIES OF DEMOCRACY

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1938, 22 December 1913, Page 4

LABORATORIES OF DEMOCRACY

":*■ SPEAKJSo'-as the guest, of the National Liberal Club in London the ;other'-day, the Eight Hok. Jas. Bkyce, the distinguished member of the British Diplomatic Corps who created so favourable an impression when he visited this country some months ago, said that New Zealand and Australia, were laboratories of democracy inasmuch as the.v were trying experiments which only countries favoured by Nature could possibly venture to try. New Zoalanders will recognise and appreciate the courteous caution of this uttcranec, but. the thinking section of them may be .pardoned for receiving it with a somewhat wry smile. Australia may speak for itself, but most intelligent New Zealanders will agree that their country is not so much a laboratory of democracy as a chopping-bloek for democracy and for much else that most undeservedly masquerades under that good name. Wc have a shining example of this fact in the deplorable strike, which has just terminated. No doubt the upheaval had 'its_- interest, from the laboratory point- of view, to the student' of social science, and it added something to the sum of human knowledge inasmuch as it brought into' play new and activc factors winch' though deeply concerned have in the past remained unduly quiescent. We refer of course to the part played in the settlement of the trouble by the farming community. Otherwise the strike established that certain wild follies and absurdities which were recognised and classified fifty years ago are still follies and absurdities at the present day. The average, sensible citizen of New Zealand would gladly forgo the satisfaction of testing anew old theories which were tested and found wanting long ago, in consideration of a little peace and quietness'and being allowed to go about his business.unmolested. It is not only polite visitors from abroad who'tell us thatNew Zealand is a laboratory of democracy. The same idea has obtained a great vogue locally, with results very favourable to the production oi cranks and extremists and correspondingly harmful to the true progress and development of the country; There lias arisen in our midst an absurd craze for the, invention of soeial panaceas which is just as stupid and unprofitable in its way as the old-time folly of keeking for the philosophers' stone, which had the fabled virtue of transmuting baser ' metals''into gold. In pursuit of this phantasm many of our forbears turned away from sane and profitable pursuits to their own undoing, and so to-day many New Zealanders turn blindly away from (he possibilities of real progress and development lying to their hand in order to pursue some imagined panacea calculated to faring about the socio.! millennium next, --wok or next year. What this country kidlv needs is a strong inoculation of eommon sciifc. There is a lesson for ai! time in t-ho fable told by Aesop of a dog who' dropped a substantial bon*: into the river in order to dispute for an imaginary bone with his own reflected image. It is a world of piths that, some of our political and industrial doctrinaires.do not take the lesson to heart. If New Zealand were doing itself justice visitors from abroad would be less apt to.compare it to a laboratory than to a workshop and a farm.' The truth undcr■lyiiig all our ' social'st-rivinos, ■ and to some extent obscured by them, is that the advancement of a nation and its people does not depend upon the discovcr.v of some artificially'created short-cut which will remove the necessity for individual endeavour, but upon an aggregation of honest individual efforts, each man and woman making the best of the opportunities that lie open to then?. There must, always'be a certain amount of political striving and contention in a healthy State,'it is true, but this opens up quite another - question than the one here touchedmpon, and it is to be noted that 51 it, Brycb did not speak of New Zealand as a battleground, but as a laboratory, of democracy. ■ - . 'i, -